THE  LIFE 


OF 


ALGERNON   CHARLES 
SWINBURNE 


BY 

EDMUND  GOSSE,  C.B. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1917 

All  rights  reterved 


9 5i  s^ 


COPTBIOBT,   1917, 

bt  the  macmillan  company. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  April,  1917. 


Norioooti  ^Ptmb 

J.  8.  Cu«hlng  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Oo. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

The  only  memoir  of  the  life  of  Algernon  Charles 
Swinburne  which  has  hitherto  been  published  is 
the  sketch  which  I  contributed  to  the  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography  in  1912.  This  was  the 
result  of  some  years  of  investigation,  and  it  is 
the  skeleton  on  which  the  present  biography  is 
built  up.  But  since  that  article  was  issued,  a 
great  deal  of  new  material  has  passed  through 
my  hands,  and  I  have  had  the  advantage  of 
consulting  many  fresh  sources  of  information. 
Important  correspondence  has  been  entrusted  to 
me,  and  early  friends  have  kindly  consented  to 
revise  my  pages.  My  narrative  is  therefore  not 
merely  much  fuller  than  it  would  have  been  in 
1912,  but  in  various  respects  more  accurate. 

Only  those  who  have  never  adventured  on  the 
biography  of  an  elder  contemporary,  and  espe- 
cially of  one  who  lived  in  great  retirement,  will 
under-estimate  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  exact 
particulars.  Events  which  occurred  seventy,  or 
even  sixty,  years  ago  are  remembered  by  few,  and 
the  recollections  of  these  few  are  seldom  consistent. 


/>     ■«    r^ 


vi    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

The  unaided  memory  of  old  companions  is  apt  to 
play  strange  vagaries,  and  in  matters  which  are 
comparatively  unimportant  may  differ  in  a  degree 
distracting  to  the  biographer.  An  additional 
difficulty  is  added  in  the  present  case,  for  Swin- 
burne himself  was  an  autobiographical  Will  o' 
the  Wisp.  He  was  not  disinclined  to  give  in- 
formation about  his  life,  but  his  recollections 
need  the  closest  inspection.  In  the  midst  of 
a  statement  of  considerable  importance  and 
value,  he  is  apt  to  introduce,  by  a  slip  of  memory, 
some  remark  which  makes  the  whole  narrative 
seem  apocryphal ;  and  the  biographer  must 
always  be  prosaically  guarding  the  poet  against 
his  own  romance.  After  the  checking  and  re- 
checking  of  eight  years,  however,  I  believe  that 
I  have  surmounted  the  main  difficulties  of  the 
task. 

In  attempting  to  do  so,  I  have  met  with 
extraordinary  and  almost  universal  kindness  from 
Swinburne's  representatives  and  friends.  Before 
all  other  helpers  I  must  mention  my  dear  and 
valued  friend,  the  late  Lord  Redesdale,  who 
never  ceased  to  press  me  forward  on  my  course 
with  his  unfailing  interest  and  sympathy.  There 
was  no  limit  to  his  friendly  solicitude,  and  he 
insisted  on  seeing  the  book  through  all  its  stages. 
He  finished  reading  the  last  revise  after  he  was 
confined  to  his  bed  by  his  fatal  illness.  Although 
in  the  body  of  the  narrative  I  have  made  use 


PREFACE  vii 

of  the  recollections  which  he  collected  at  my 
request,  I  have  printed,  in  an  appendix,  the  letter 
itself  in  which  Lord  Redesdale  embodied  most  of 
those  memories,  for  it  is  an  excellent  and  char- 
acteristic specimen  of  his  own  manner  of  writing. 
It  is  a  sorrow  to  me  that  this  volume,  to  the 
publication  of  which  he  so  indulgently  looked 
forward,  can  never  reach  his  hands. 

The  early  friends  of  Swinburne  who  have 
helped  me  are  too  numerous  to  be  mentioned 
here,  and  their  aid  is  acknowledged  in  the  text. 
I  must,  however,  express  my  particular  thanks 
to  Lord  Bryce,  who  has  been  good  enough  to 
read  the  Oxford  chapter,  to  which,  moreover, 
he  has  substantially  contributed.  Those  helpers 
who  died  while  my  book  was  being  slowly  pre- 
pared must  be  named  here  with  regret  as  well  as 
gratitude  —  Ingram  Bywater,  R.  W.  Raper,  Edith 
Sichel,  Francis  Warre-Cornish,  J.  L.  Strachan- 
Davidson. 

The  Marquess  of  Crewe  has  generously  placed 
at  my  disposal  the  correspondence  of  Swinburne 
with  his  father.  Lord  Houghton,  together  with  im- 
portant illustrative  matter.  Viscount  Morley  has 
entrusted  to  me  his  file  of  the  poet's  letters,  and 
has  been  so  kind  as  to  read  Chapters  VI.  and  VII. 
in  proof.  Professor  James  Fitzmaurice-Kelly  has 
read  my  proofs  and  given  me  many  valuable 
suggestions.  But  most  of  all  I  have  to  thank 
Mr.  Thomas  J.   Wise  for  loyal  and  active  help 


viii    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

throughout,  for  endless  loans  of  MSS.  and  corre- 
spondence, and  for  free  access  to  his  unrivalled  col- 
lection of  Swinburniana.  In  my  fourth  Appendix 
I  give  fuller  testimony  to  his  part  in  my  labours. 
So  large  is  the  amount  of  new  biographical 
detail  which  I  found  in  my  possession  and  was 
unwilling  to  ignore,  that  I  was  obliged  to  abandon 
the  idea  of  adding,  in  a  final  chapter,  an  estimate 
of  Swinburne's  comparative  place  in  literature, 
and  particularly  in  the  history  of  poetry.  Various 
books  with  this  purpose  have  been  published, 
among  them  those  of  Wratislaw  (1900),  Wood- 
berry  (1906),  Mackail  (1909),  Thomas  (1913), 
Drinkwater  (1913),  and  Welby  (1914).  More  will 
doubtless  be  attempted,  since  the  genius  of 
Swinburne  will  never  cease  to  interest  critics, 
and  successive  generations  of  students  will  be 
drawn  to  examine  his  writings  with  more  and 
more  intelligence  and  sympathy. 

EDMUND   GOSSE. 

January  1917. 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

Childhood  —  Eton  (1837-1853)  ....        1 

CHAPTER  II 

Oxford  (1853-1859) 28 

CHAPTER  III 

Early  Life  in  London  (1859-1865) ....      65 

CHAPTER  IV 

At  AL  ANT  A  IN  CALYDON.      CHASTELARD     .  .  .      107 

CHAPTER  V 

Poems  and  Ballads  (1866) 133 

CHAPTER  VI 

Songs  of  the  Republic  (1867-1870)         .        .        .164 

CHAPTER  VII 

The  Middle  Years  (1870-1879)        .        .        .        .198 


X    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
CHAPTER  VIII 

PAGE 

Putney  (1879-1909) 245 

CHAPTER  IX 

Personal  Characteristics 283 

APPENDICES 

Appendix  I.     Swinburne  at  Eton.     Letter  from 

Lord  Redesdale 317 

Appendix  II.     Pauline,  Lady  Trevelyan.     Letter 

FROM  Sir  George  Otto  Trevelyan,  Bart.        .     324 

Appendix  III.     Swinburne  and  Mallarme.     Letter 

FROM  Mr.  George  Moore 327 

Appendix  IV.    Swinburne's  Posthumous  Writings    331 

NOTE 337 

INDEX 339 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A.  C.  Swinburne  and  his  Sisters.  From  the  Painting  by 
George  Richmond,  R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery  .......        Frontispiece 

FACE    PAGE 

Portrait  of  Swinburne  in  a  Design  by  D.  G,  Rossetti  for 
a  Frontispiece  to  The  Early  Italian  Poets.  En- 
graved by  J.  D.  Cooper  .....       76 

Cartoon  for  Glass,  containing  Portraits  of  A.  C.  Swin- 
burne and  Christina  Rossetti,  in  the  possession  of 
Mr.  Thos.  J.  Wise 106 

Portrait  of  Swinburne.  From  a  Drawing  by  Simeon 
Solomon,  now  in  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum,  Cam- 
bridge     162 

Portrait  drawn  from  life  by  Carlo  Pellegrini  in  1874, 

now  in  the  possession  of  Edmund  Gosse         .         .     224 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  circa  1869,  from  a  Photo- 
graph by  Messrs.  Elliott  &  Fry      ....     284 

Facsimile  of  Swinburne's  handwriting  .         .         .     314 


CHAPTER  I 

CHILDHOOD ETON 

(1837-1853) 

It  would  be  interesting  to  see  what  light  a  man 
of  penetration,  who,  like  the  late  Sir  Francis 
Gal  ton,  had  made  a  scientific  study  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  heredity,  could  throw  upon  the  somewhat 
extraordinary  lineage  of  Algernon  Swinburne. 
The  poet  himself  was  inclined  to  dwell  on  the 
notable  character  of  his  parentage  on  both  sides, 
and  to  claim  to  be  the  efflorescence  of  two  tough 
and  redoubtable  races.  It  is,  however,  clear 
that  whatever  their  adventures  had  been  neither, 
the  Swinburnes  nor  the  Ashburnhams  had  pro- 
duced a  poet  or  a  scholar  before.  They  were 
pure  types  of  the  aristocratic  class  in  its  moods 
for  producing  sportsmen,  soldiers,  and  county 
magnates.  The  traveller  Henry  Swinburne  (1743- 
1803)  was  the  sole  member  of  either  family  who 
had  sought  distinction  with  his  pen.  This  de- 
tachment from  letters  must  be  dwelt  upon, 
because  it  was  an  object  of  constant  interest  to 
the  poet  himself,  who  took  a  considerable  pride 
in  the  supposed  chivalry  and  violence  of  his 
forbears.  In  a  letter  to  Stedman,  in  1875,  after 
expatiating  on  the  deeds  of  his  ancestors,  he  wrote 


2     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SAVINBURNE 

with  a  certain  complacency,  "I  think  you  will 
allow  that  when  this  race  chose  at  last  to  produce 
a  poet,  it  would  have  been  at  least  remarkable 
if  he  had  been  content  to  write  nothing  but 
hymns  and  idylls  for  clergymen  and  young  ladies 
to  read  out  in  chapels  and  drawing-rooms."  ^ 

There  had  been,  indeed,  nothing  idyllic  in  the 
history  of  the  Swinburnes,  ^ji  ancjent  Border  clan 
of  the  comity  of  Northumberland.  According  to 
family  tradition,  which  the  poet  accepted,  "there 
was  a  Swinburne  peerage,  but  it  has  been  dormant 
or  forfeit  since  the  thirteenth  or  fourteenth  cen- 
tury." Less  shadowy  is  a  Sir  Adam  de  Swin- 
burne of  the  reign  of  Edward  IL,  a  man-at-arms 
whose  grandson,  or  other  descendant,  lost  Swin- 
burne Castle,  but  became  lord  of  Chollerton  and 
Capheaton.  While  the  Percys  lived  in  semi- 
royal  state  at  Wrassil,  in  Yorkshire,  the  Swin- 
burnes had  charge  of  their  vast  Northumbrian 
possessions ;  from  a  MS.  document  of  22  Henry 
VII.,  I  learn  that  in  that  year  George  Swinburne 
was  master-forester  to  Henry,  fifth  Earl  of 
Northumberland  (1477-1527).  After  romantic 
adventures  which  the  poet  loved  to  recite,  the 
family  settled  at  Capheaton  in  the  beginning  of 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  and  has  resided  there  ever 
since.  In  1660  a  baronetcy  was  conferred  on  John 
Swinburne  "virum,  patrimonio  censu  et  morum 
probitate  spectabilem,"  and  has  survived  to  our 
day.  Three  successive  baronets  married  wives 
of  royal  descent.  During  Algernon's  childhood 
and    early    manhood,    his    grandfather,    Sir   John 

*  Mrs.  Disney  Leith  supplies,  however,  a  warning  word  —  "Algernon 
had  IS.  very  bad  head  for  genealogies." 


CHILDHOOD  3 

Swinburne,  was  head  of  the  house,  and  this  very 
remarkable  man  did  more  than  any  other  person 
to  awaken  the  prochvities  and  moral  temperament 
of  the  poet.  From  his  turbulent  grandfather  he 
inherited  his  repubRcanism,  his  impatience  of  re- 
straint,  his  love  of  violent  exercise,  and  from  both 
families  his  elaborate  and  ceremonious  courtesy. 
Sir  John  Swinburne,  who  had  been  born  in  1762, 
was  a  link  with  the  eighteenth  century  more  than 
half-way  down  the  nineteenth,  for  he  lived  to 
enter  his  ninety -ninth  year,  and  to  die  in  1860. 
From  his  grandson's  recollections  of  him  a 
quotation  may  be  pertinent : 

Born  and  brought  up  in  France,  his  father  (I  believe) 
a  naturalized  Frenchman  (we  were  all  Catholic  and 
Jacobite  rebels  and  exiles)  and  his  mother  a  lady  of 
the  house  of  Polignac  ^  .  .  .  my  grandfather  never  left 
France  till  called  away  at  twenty-five  on  the  falling  in  of 
such  English  estates  (about  half  the  original  quantity) 
as  confiscation  had  left  to  a  family  which  in  every 
Catholic  rebellion  from  the  days  of  my  own  Queen  Mary 
to  those  of  Charles  Edward  had  given  their  blood  like 
water  and  their  lands  like  dust  for  the  Stuarts.  I 
assume  that  his  Catholicism  sat  lightly  upon  a  young 
man  who  in  the  age  of  Voltaire  had  enjoyed  the  personal 
friendship  of  Mirabeau.  .  .  .  He  was  (of  course  on  the 
ultra-Liberal  side)  one  of  the  most  extreme  politicians 
as  well  as  one  of  the  hardest  riders  and  the  best  art- 
patrons  of  his  time.  ...  It  was  said  that  the  two 
maddest  things  in  the  north  country  were  his  horse  and 
himself.  .  ,  .  He  was  the  friend  of  the  great  Turner,  of 
Mulready,  and  of  many  lesser  artists :    I  wish  to  God  he 

^  Mrs.  Disney  Leith  considers  that  in  claiming  this  descent  the  poet 
made  a  mistake.  Miss  Isabel  Swinburne  (who  died,  the  last  survivor 
of  the  Admiral's  children,  on  the  5th  of  November  1915)  thought  that 
her  brother  may  have  heard  his  grandfather  talk  vaguely  of  French  con- 
nections, and  misunderstood  the  nature  of  them. 


4   ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

had  discovered  Blake.  .  .  .  He  was  most  kind  and 
affectionate  to  me  always  as  child,  boy,  and  youth.  To 
the  last  he  was  far  liker  in  appearance  and  manners  to  an 
old  French  nobleman  than  to  any  type  of  the  average 
English  gentleman. 

On  the  other  side,  influences  came  from  the 
Ashburnhams,  whom  Fuller  described  two  cen- 
turies and  a  half  ago  as  "a  family  of  stupendous 
antiquity";  settled  in  Sussex  before  the  Norman 
Conquest.  The  poet  took  pleasure  in  the  fidehty 
of  John  Ashburnham  who  "was  the  closest 
follower  of  Charles  I.  to  his  death,"  and  who 
cleverly  arranged  the  King's  safe-conduct  from 
Oxford.  A  barony  rewarded  the  son  of  this 
cavalier,  and  an  earldom  followed  in  1730.  In 
the  course  of  the  eighteenth  century  both  the 
Ashburnhams  and  the  Swinburnes  married  into 
the  family  of  the  Dukes  of  Northumberland.  All 
this  genealogy  is  to  be  lightly  passed  over,  but 
not  ignored.  The  poet,  although  so  ardent  a 
republican,  was  no  democrat,  and  he  did  not 
affect,  like  "the  gardener  Adam  and  his  wife," 
to  "smile  at  the  claims  of  long  descent." 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  was  born  in 
Chester  Street,  Grosvenor  Place,  London,  on  the 
5th  of  April  1837.  He  was  the  eldest  of  the  six 
children  of  Admiral  Charles  Henry  Swinburne 
(1797-1877),  by  his  wife  Lady  Jane  Henrietta 
(1809-1896),  daughter  of  George,  third  Earl  of 
Ashburnham.  The  admiral  was  the  second  son 
of  the  sixth  baronet,  the  friend  of  Mirabeau ;  he 
is  described  to  me  by  a  survivor  as  devoted  to 
mechanics,  with  some  interest  in  music  but  none 
in  literature.     Towards  the  close  of  his  life  the 


CHILDHOOD  5 

poet  wrote  to  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  that  his  "father 
served  as  a  midshipman  under  ColHngwood/  and 
knew  Lady  Hester  Stanhope  in  her  later  days 
when  an  Eastern  princess  and  prophetess.  She 
was  very  civil  and  pleasant  to  him,  and  I  always 
as  a  boy  thought  what  fun  it  must  have  been  as 
an  experience."  From  his  father  the  poet  in- 
herited, however,  little  except  a  certain  identity 
of  colour  and  expression ;  Algernon's  features 
and  something  of  his  mental  character  being  his 
mother's.  From  her  father,  the  third  Earl,  she 
had  received  a  careful  education,  and  she  possessed 
considerable  literary  taste.  In  particular,  she 
piiltivatpH  yvUh  nrHniif  the  French  and  Italian 
languages.  Much  of  her  youth  had  been  spent 
in  Florence,  at  a  time  when  the  elegant  accom- 
plishment for  Englishwomen  was,  par  excellencey 
Italian,  and  Lady  Jane  taught  the  elements  of  that 
tommeJio  her  eldest  son  at  an  extremely  early  age. 
Swinburne  told  me  that  he  had  read  the  Orlando 
Furioso  long  before  he  heard  of  The  Faerie  Queen. 
His  father's  family  also  had  a  curious  con- 
nection with  Italy.  Algernon's  grand-uncle, 
Robert  Swinburne,  became  an  Austrian  subject, 
and  rose  to  be  a  general  and  a  baron  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  He  was  at  the  time  of 
his  death  Austrian  Governor  of  Milan.  His  son, 
Baron  E.  R.  F.  F.  Swinburne,  who  died  as  lately 
as  1907,  was  Chamberlain  to  the  Emperor  Franz 
Josef.     These  were  strange  kinsmen  for  the  poet 

*  This  must  have  been  a  slip  of  memory,  for  Collingwood  died  six  months 
before  the  future  admiral  started  his  career  at  the  Royal  Naval  College  in 
September  1810.  He  served  at  sea  in  various  capacities,  and  several 
times  on  the  Mediterranean  station,  from  1812  to  1833,  but  saw  no 
fighting. 


6       ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

wlio  was  never  tired  of  denouncing  "the  plume- 
plucked  Austrian  vulture-head,  twin-crested." 

Though  born,  almost  by  accident,  in  London, 
the  whole  of  Swinburne's  childhood  was  spent  in 
the  country,  with  his  parents  in  the  southern 
part  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  with  his  grand- 
father in  Northumberland.  Swinburne  stated  in 
a  letter  to  Stedman  that  he  was  born  "all  but 
dead,  and  certainly  was  not  expected  to  live  an 
hour."  ^  But  he  grew  up  a  healthy  boy,  and 
passed  through  his  childhood  without  anything 
more  serious  than  mild  attacks  of  the  usual 
infantile  disorders.  He  was,  from  the  first, 
nervous  and  fragile  in  appearance,  but  underneath 
his  sprite-like  slenderness  there  lurked  a  wiry 
persistency  of  constitution.  Admiral  Swinburne 
rented  East  Dene,  a  large  house  in  Bonchurch, 
at  the  eastern  extremity  of  the  village,  and 
immediately  under  the  high  cornice  of  St.  Boni- 
face Down.  The  rambling  gardens  and  l^i^s  of 
East  Dene  descend  southward  to  the  sea-shore, 
divided  from  it  only  by  the  masked  path  that 
leads  to  Luccombe,  and  so  they  practically  shelve 
from  the  great  trees  in  the  shadow  of  the  Under- 
cliff  down  to  the  shingle  and  the  seaweed.  The 
view  from  the  house  south-east  is  over  limitless 
ocean.  Close  by,  to  the  east,  is  the  wonderful 
chaos  of  the  Landslip  with  its  tangled  lianas  and 
romantic  chasms,  and  to  the  west,  the  shores  of 
Monk's  Bay  and  Horse  Shoe  Bay  with  their 
groynes  and  their  fishermen's  boats,  so  that  on 
each  side  there  lay  an  enchanted  Tom  Tiddler's 

^  Mrs.  Disney  Leith,  however,  regards  this  statement  of  her  cousin's 
as  apocryphal. 


CHILDHOOD  7 

Ground  for  emancipated  children  through  the  bHss- 
ful  and  interminable  seasons  of  seventy  years  ago. 

But  although  East  Dene  was  such  a  paradise 
for  an  active  and  healthy  child,  it  did  not 
stand  alone  in  Algernon's  fortunate  experi- 
ence. Five  miles  east  of  Bonchurch,  on  the 
romantic  high-road  between  the  Undercliff  and 
the  sea,  stood  the  Orchard,  the  home  of  Sir 
Willoughby  Gordon.  Algernon's  uncle  and  aunt. 
Sir  Henry  and  Lady  Mary  Gordon,  lived  at  North- 
court,  at  Shorwell,  which  was  about  an  equal 
distance  from  Bonchurch.  They  with  their 
children,  of  whom  Mrs.  Disney  Leith  was  one, 
made  frequent  visits  to  the  grandparents'  sea- 
side home.  The  Orchard,  where  might  be  con- 
stantly seen  *' Algernon,  riding  on  a  very  small 
pony,  led  by  a  servant,"  come  to  spend  an 
enchanting  day  with  his  cousins  by  the  sea  at 
St.  Catherine's  Point  or  in  Puckaster  Cove,  or, 
straying  farther  afield,  in  the  sinuous  and  leafy 
lanes  of  Niton  or  over  the  hills  to  Chale. 

From  some  stanzas  addressed  to  his  aunt. 
Lady  Mary  Gordon,  in  which  Swinburne  at- 
tempted late  in  life  to  sum  up  his  memories  of 
the  garden  at  The  Orchard,  one  may  here  be 
quoted,  in  which,  looking  far  backward,  he 
declares  that  — 

The  sun  to  sport  in  and  the  cliffs  to  scale, 

The  sea  to  clasp  and  wrestle  with,  till  breath 
For  rapture  more  than  weariness  would  fail, 
All-golden  gifts  of  dawn,  whose  record  saith 
That  time  nor  change  may  turn  their  life  to  death. 
Live  not  in  loving  thought  alone,  though  there 
The  life  they  live  be  lovelier  than  they  were 
When  clothed  in  present  light  and  actual  air. 


8   ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

A  year  or  two  later,  Algernon  and  his  eldest  sister 
Alice  would  be  seen  "walking  on  ahead  of  the 
rest  over  the  rough  grass  of  the  Bonchurch  down  — 
he  with  that  springy  dancing  step  which  he  never 
entirely  lost."  The  surviving  cousin,  now  Mrs. 
Disney  Leith,  has  preserved  a  charming  picture 
of  the  walks  and  games  "up  the  hill,"  in  which 
the  future  poet  took  the  lead  of  a  happy  band 
of  playmates.  In  all  his  pleasures,  however, 
although  they  included  riding,  roaming,  and 
climbing,  tj^T  «fa,  tr^^k  thp  foremost  pln^f^  His 
own  words  are  significant : 

As  for  the  sea  (he  wrote  to  Stedman),  its  salt  must  have 
been  in  my  blood  before  I  was  born.  I  can  remember 
no  earlier  enjoyment  than  being  held  up  naked  in  my 
father's  arms  and  brandished  between  his  hands,  then 
shot  like  a  stone  from  a  sling  through  the  air,  shouting 
and  laughing  with  delight,  head  foremost  into  the  coming 
wave.  ...  I  remember  being  afraid  of  other  things, 
but  never  of  the  sea. 

For  his  aunt.  Lady  Mary  Gordon,  who  died 
in  1899  in  her  eighty-fourth  year,  the  poet  re- 
tained through  life  an  almost  passionate  devo- 
tion. In  some  hitherto  unpublished  lines,  written 
shortly  before  her  death,  he  tells  her  that  — 

Child  and  boy  and  man,  one  equal  light 
Of  loving  kindness  made  me  in  your  sight 
Glad  always  as  the  sea  makes  all  shores  bright. 

In  the  happy  household  at  The  Orchard  he 
was  always  known  by  the  romantic  name  of 
Cousin  Hadji. 

The  Swinburnes  were  a  devout  Anglican 
family,  looked  upon  as  rather  "high"  in  those 
early  days  of  ecclesiastical  revival.     In  the  midst 


CHILDHOOD  9 

of  the  poet's  early  childhood,  the  household 
was  thrilled  by  the  Oxford  Movement  and  by  the 
formidable,  yet  exhilarating,  charges  of  heresy 
brought  against  its  leaders.  Without  going  very 
deeply  into  theology,  they  threw  in  their  lot  with 
Newman  and  Keble,  and  their  Anglicanism  took 
a  warmer  and  vivider  colouring.  In  this  the 
household  at  East  Dene  was  fully  supported  by 
the  families  at  Niton  and  at  Northcourt,  and 
Algernon  Swinburne  was  trained  in  a  strictly 
High  Church  atmosphere.  As  child  and  boy 
he  was,  as  he  afterwards  put  it,  "brought  up 
quasi-Catholic."  Into  the  religious  exercises  of 
Sunday  he  entered  even  "passionately,"  and 
when  it  was  his  turn  to  read  the  Bible  aloud  or 
make  a  reply  from  the  Catechism,  those  who 
listened  early  remarked  how  beautifully  he  did 
it.  In  particular,  his  mother  insisted,  and  there 
was  no  need  for  her  to  urge  on  so  ardent  a 
pupil,  that  her  eldest  son  should  acquire  an 
extended  knowledge  of  the  Holy  Scriptures. 
This  acquaintance  with  the  text  of  the  Bible  he 
retained  to  the  end  of  his  life,  and  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  be  emphatic  about  the  advantage  he 
had  received  from  the  beauty  of  its  language. 
At  a  very  early  age  he  was  perceived  to  have  a 
marked  fondness  for  reading,  and  Mrs.  Disney 
Leith  retains  her  recollection  that  "Algernon 
was  always  privileged  to  have  a  book  at  meals." 
Less  has  been  recorded  about  his  childish 
visits  to  Capheaton,  but  his  own  poems  contain 
innumerable  references  to  the  effect  of  the  bracing 
Northumberland  landscape  upon  his  nerves.  It 
was  the  habit  of  the   Swinburnes   to   spend  the 


l^' 


10  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

late  summer  and  early  autumn  in  the  north,  so 
as  to  escape  the  sultry  heats  of  Bonchurch  and 
Niton,  exposed  in  August  to  the  full  glare  of  the 
sea.  A  large  cousinhood  gathered  at  Capheaton 
*'in  those  bright  autumn  days,  where  everything 
seemed  to  combine  for  the  delight  of  youth  —  a 
lake  to  row  and  sail  on,  lovely  gardens  and  woods 
to  roam  or  play  in,  and,  above  all,  abundance  of 
ponies  to  ride."  The  rough  and  manly  aspect  of 
Northumberland,  where  — 

Through  fell  and  moorland, 
And  salt-sea  foreland, 
Our  noisy  norland 

Resounds  and  rings, 

gave  an  element  of  strength  to  Swinburne's 
genius,  just  as  the  rich  southward  boskage  of  the 
Isle  of  Wight  gave  it  sweetness  and  melody.  All 
through  his  life,  his  idea  of  a  southern  scene  was 
of  looking  from  the  ferny  dells  of  Bonchurch  out 
over  gardens  to  the  Channel ;  a  northern  one,  of 
looking  eastward  over  the  great  lion-coloured 
sands  of  Bamborough  towards  a  grey  and  storm- 
shaken  Northumbrian  ocean. 

This  rapidly-developing  intelligence  taxed  and 
yet  stimulated  the  powers  of  his  mother,  who 
instructed  a  "  soul-hydroptic "  pupil  in  the 
elements  of  history,  of  religion,  and  of  the  lan- 
guages of  Italy  and  France.  His  amiable  docility 
was  extreme ;  he  responded  with  astonishing 
eagerness  to  all  the  advances  of  knowledge,  and 
his  demands  soon  became  greater  than  Lady 
Jane  could  afford  to  respond  to.  It  was  deter- 
mined, as  he  was  destined  for  Eton,  to  entrust 
him  to  the  care  of  Collingwood  Foster  Fenwick, 


ETON  11 

the  rector  of  Brook,  a  parish  at  the  other  end  of 
the  island.  Northcourt,  the  home  of  Algernon's 
uncle  and  aunt  Gordon,  was  about  half-way 
between  Bonchurch  and  Brook,  and  an  easy 
pony-ride  from  the  latter.  The  link  between  the 
families,  therefore,  was  not  broken.  Mr.  Fenwick 
expressed  himself  astonished  at  finding  the  child 
already  so  deeply  taught  in  certain  directions.  He 
was  not,  however,  either  at  home  or  at  Brook, 
allowed  to  read  any  fiction,  Lady  Jane  Swinburne 
having  firm  views  on  this  subject.  There  seems 
to  be  some  little  doubt  as  to  the  date  when  this 
embargo  was  raised.  Lord  Redesdale  thinks  it 
coincided  with  Algernon's  arrival  at  Eton.  The 
poet  himself  told  me  that  the  earliest  novel  he 
was  ever  allowed  to  see  was  Domhey  and  Son,  and 
that  he  read  it  in  the  serial  numbers ;  these  were 
brought  to  a  conclusion  in  1848,  but  we  are  not 
obliged  to  believe  that  they  circulated  immedi- 
ately in  the  Swinburne  households. 

Swinburne  entered  Eton  at  the  beginning  of 
the  summer  half  of  1849,  being  then  twelve  years 
of  age.  His  father  and  mother  brought  him  to 
school  and  at  once  sent  for  his  first  cousin, 
Algernon  Bertram  Mitford,  that  they  might  put 
him  under  the  care  of  a  kinsman  five  weeks  his 
senior.  I  had  the  singular  good  fortune  to  be 
able  to  obtain  from  this  cousin,  afterwards  the 
first  Lord  Redesdale  (1837-1916),  a  very  full 
and  picturesque  account  of  the  poet's  arrival 
and  behaviour  at  school.^  He  was  to  "look 
after  him,"  and  although  there  was  little  differ- 

^  For  the  complete  text  of  these  reminiscences  see  Appendix  I.  of  this 
volume. 


c 


12     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SAVINBURNE 

ence  in  the  boys'  ages,  the  elder  had  been  sent 
to  school  when  he  was  nine  years  old  and  was 
well  versed  in  all  the  ways  of  Eton,  "mysteries 
bewildering  to  the  uninitiated."  Lord  Redesdale 
writes : 

What  a  fragile  little  creature  he  seemed  as  he  stood 
there  between  his  father  and  mother,  with  his  wondering 
eyes  fixed  upon  me !  Under  his  arm  he  hugged  his 
Bowdler's  Shakespeare,  a  very  precious  treasure  bound 
in  brown  leather  with,  for  a  marker,  a  narrow  slip  of 
ribbon,  blue  I  think,  with  a  button  of  that  most  heathenish 
marqueterie  called  Tunbridge  ware  dangling  from  the 
end  of  it.  He  was  strangely  tiny.  His  limbs  were 
small  and  delicate,  and  his  sloping  shoulders  looked  far 
too  weak  to  carry  his  great  head,  the  size  of  which  was 
exaggerated  by  the  tousled  mass  of  red  hair  standing 
almost  at  right  angles  to  it.  Hero-worshippers  talk  of 
his  hair  as  having  been  a  "golden  aureole."  At  that 
time  there  was  nothing  golden  about  it.  Red,  violent, 
aggressive  red  it  was,  unmistakable  red,  like  burnished 
copper.  His  features  were  small  and  beautiful,  chiselled 
as  daintily  as  those  of  some  Greek  sculptor's  master- 
piece. His  skin  was  very  w'hite  —  not  unhealthy,  but  a 
transparent  tinted  white,  such  as  one  sees  in  the  petals 
of  some  roses.  His  face  was  the  very  replica  of  that  of 
his  dear  mother,  and  she  was  one  of  the  most  refined  and 
lovely  of  women.  His  red  hair  must  have  come  from 
the  Admiral's  side,  for  I  never  heard  of  a  red-haired 
Ashburnham. 

Sir  George  Young,  who  was  six  months 
Swinburne's  junior,  was  introduced  to  him  by 
Joynes  in  September  1849,  and  saw  a  good  deal 
of  him  that  half  and  the  next;  and  then  again 
a  year  later.  He  gives  a  slightly  more  elaborate 
account  of  Swinburne's  appearance.  "His  hair 
was  of  three  different  colours  and  textures,  red, 


ETON  13 

dark  red,  and  bright,  pure  gold."  Both  combine 
to  describe  him  as  at  that  time  "a  fascinating, 
most  lovable  little  child,"  and  both  speak  of  a 
certain  isolation  which  marked  him  off  from 
others ;  "he  was  not  at  home  among  Eton  boys," 
says  Sir  George  Young ;  his  cousin  tells  us  he  was 
"shy  and  reserved."  But  let  Lord  Redesdale 
continue  his  clear  and  invaluable  recollections : 

We  rapidly  became  friends.  Of  course,  being  in 
separate  houses,  we  could  not  be  so  constantly  together 
as  if  we  had  both  been  in  the  same  house.  I  was  at 
Evans's  and  Durnford  was  my  tutor.  Swinburne  was 
at  Joynes's  and  of  course  Joynes  was  his  tutor.  Still 
we  often  met,  and  pretty  frequently  breakfasted  together, 
he  with  me,  or  I  with  him.  Chocolate  in  his  room,  tea 
in  mine.  The  guest  brought  his  own  "order"  of  rolls 
and  butter,  and  the  feast  was  made  rich  by  the  addition 
of  sixpennyworth  of  scraped  beef  or  ham  from  Joe 
Groves's,  a  small  sock-shop  which  was  almost  immedi- 
ately under  Joynes's  house.  Little  gifts  such  as  our 
humble  purses  could  afford  cemented  our  friendship :  I 
still  possess  and  treasure  an  abbreviated  edition  of 
Froissart's  Chronicles  which  Algernon  gave  me  (in  1850) 
now,  alas  !  sixty-five  years  ago. 

He  boarded  at  the  house  in  Keate's  Lane  now 
known  as  Keate  House.  It  was  "Joynes'"  then. 
Mrs.  Warre-Cornish,  who  has  collected  some  of 
the  legends  of  the  houses  in  those  days,  tells  the 
following  story  of  a  visit  paid  by  Lady  Jane 
Swinburne  to  her  son  when  he  had  the  measles  — 
she  read  Shakespeare  to  him  through  the  day : 

.  .  .  and  when  she  left  him  at  tea-time  to  take  tea  with  Mrs. 
Joynes,  the  maid  brought  from  home  was  requested  by 
the  boy  to  continue  reading  whilst  he  took  his.  A  pot 
of   jam   suddenly   emptied   on    the   readier 's   head   was   a 


14  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

sign  that  this  interpretation  of  Shakespeare  did  not 
soothe  the  patient.  The  other  story  is  connected  with 
the  night-dose  for  wintry  colds.  This  one  was  brought 
in  to  a  boy,  who  stood  up  on  his  bed  instead  of  lying  on 
it,  and  whose  wild,  rolling  eye  accompanied  a  passionate 
outpouring  of  verse.  The  ministering  incomer  feared 
delirium,  but  was  told  that  it  was  "only  little  Swinburne 
reciting  as  usual." 

He  was,  like  everybody  else,  now  and  then  in- 
disposed, and  Sir  George  Young  remembers,  on 
another  occasion,  seeing  him  in  bed  when  "his 
little  white  face,  great  aureole  of  hair,  and  green 
eyes,  looked  at  me  from  the  pillow."  Swinburne's 
physical  strangeness  was  the  object  of  wonder  at 
Eton,  but  he  was  preserved  from  bullying  by  a 
certain  dignity  and  by  his  unquestionable  courage. 
He  was  not  interfered  with  since  he  interfered 
with  no  one  else,  and  Sir  George  Young  admits 
that,  even  as  quite  a  small  boy,  there  was  "some- 
thing a  little  formidable  about  him." 

There  would  naturally  be  a  section  of  his  school- 
fellows to  whom  there  was  nothing  attractive  in  his 
temperament,  and  when  I  applied  to  the  late  Lord 
St.  Aldwyn,  who  was  his  contemporary  at  Eton, 
he  could  recall  nothing  except  that  Swinburne 
was  "a  horrid  little  boy,  with  a  big  red  head  and  a 
pasty  complexion,  who  looked  as  though  a  course 
of  physical  exercise  would  have  done  him  good." 
The  disproportionate  size  of  his  head  —  which  was 
noticeable  all  through  his  life,  although  ridicu- 
lously denied  after  his  death  —  was  an  object  of 
amazement  at  Eton.  His  hat  was  the  largest 
in  the  school,  when  he  was  only  twelve  years  of 
age.      The    present    Provost    recounts    how    one 


ETON  15 

day,  in  a  schoolroom  only  approached  by  a  sort 
of  ladder,  Swinburne's  wild  and  glowing  head 
appeared  one  dark  morning  very  late  for  school 
as  if  out  of  the  floor,  and  how  the  Master  in 
charge,  who  was  W.  G.  Cookesley  (1802-1880), 
paused  to  exclaim,  *'Ha!  here's  the  rising  sun 
at  last!"  Cookesley,  who  was  a  scholar  and 
an  intelligent  man,  ought  to  have  made  out  that 
Swinburne  was  something  extraordinary. 

During  the  holidays  of  that  year,  1849,  Swin- 
burne's parents  travelled  in  the  Lakes,  and  took 
Algernon  with  them.  In  September  they  all 
visited  Rydal  Mount,  where  the  aged  Wordsworth 
received  them  with  great  civility.  Miss  Eliza- 
beth Sewell  (1815-1906)  was  present  on  this  very 
interesting  occasion,  and  made  the  following 
entry  in  her  journal : 

He  [Mr.  Wordsworth]  was  so  very  nice  to  Algernon, 
especially  at  last,  that  I  could  have  cried,  as  Algernon 
did  when  we  went  away.  .  .  .  Lady  Jane  said  what  a 
pleasure  it  had  been  to  bring  Algernon,  and  how  he 
had  looked  forward  to  it,  as  he  was  already  acquainted 
with  his  writings.  Wordsworth's  answer  was,  "Yes,  he 
supposed  Algernon  might  have  read  'We  are  Seven' 
and  some  other  little  things.  There  was  nothing  in  his 
writings  that  would  do  the  boy  harm,  and  there  were 
some  things  that  might  do  him  good."  Some  observa- 
tion was  made  about  Algernon's  not  forgetting  his  visit, 
and  Wordsworth's  words  were,  "He  did  not  think  Algernon 
would  forget  him." 

Wordsworth  died  six  months  later,  and  Swin- 
burne told  me  that  when  the  news  reached  Eton 
it  "darkened  the  April  sunshine"  for  him. 

There  is  a  general  agreement  that  an  almost 


16  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

immediate  development  of  Swinburne's  intellect 
followed  his  arrival  at  Eton.  His  bringing  up  at 
home  had  been  scrupulously  strict,  but  his  mother 
demanded  from  him  no  further  protestations  or 
promises,  except  that  he  would  not  look  at 
Byron's  poems ;  she  felt  that  a  brain  so  pre- 
cocious could  be  fed  no  longer  upon  food  for 
babes.  Lord  Redesdale  becomes  again  our 
guide : 

His  school  work  was  prepared,  as  in  the  case  of  other 
boys,  in  his  room ;  his  reading  for  pleasure  was  done  in 
the  boys'  library  in  Weston's  yard.  I  can  see  him  now 
sitting  perched  up  Turk-or-tailor-wise  in  one  of  the 
windows  looking  out  on  the  yard,  with  some  huge  old- 
world  tome,  almost  as  big  as  himself,  upon  his  lap,  the 
afternoon  sun  setting  on  fire  the  great  mop  of  red  hair. 

This  is  confirmed  by  Mr.  Luxmoore,  who 
remembers  seeing  him  at  the  top  of  a  ladder  in 
the  College  Library,  with  his  bright  head  against 
the  dark  book-shelves.  "Few  boys  had  access 
to  the  College  Library  then,  but  Swinburne  found 
out  the  way,  and  was  constantly  seen  there." 

Another  contemporary  describes  him  pointed 
out  to  visitors  by  "Grub"  Brown,  the  librarian, 
as  one  of  the  sights  of  Eton,  where  he  sat, 
day  after  day,  in  a  gallery-window  of  the 
Hbrary  with  a  folio  across  his  knees.  He  read 
the  English  poets  with  such  assiduity,  and  over 
so  wide  a  range,  that  it  could  seem  to  Sir  George 
Young  difficult  to  say  what,  as  a  little  school- 
boy, Swinburne  "did  not  know  and  did  not 
appreciate  of  English  literature."  His  copy  of 
Dr.  Johnson's  Lives  of  the  English  Poets  bears  on 
it,  in  his  handwriting,  the  date  April  18,  1850. 


ETON  17 

Earlier  than  this  his  mother  had  given  him  a 
copy  of  Beattie's  Minstrel,  a  poem  then  still  much 
admired  by  readers  of  mature  years.  His  extra- 
ordinary and  lifelong  devotion  to  the  minor 
dramatists  of  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  ages 
dates  from  his  early  Eton  days. 

Thirty  years  later,  when  Swinburne  was  look- 
ing over  my  book-shelves,  he  took  down  a  copy 
of  Lamb's  Specirnens  of  the  English  Dramatic 
Poets,  and,  turning  to  me,  said,  "That  book 
taught  me  more  than  any  other  in  the  world,  — 
that  and  the  Bible."  He  wrote  (in  1885)  that 
the  plays  of  Marston  had  dwelt  in  his  memory 
since  "I  first  read  them  at  the  advanced  age 
of  twelve,"  and  (in  1887)  that  those  of  so  obscure 
a  writer  as  Nabbes  had  been  familiar  to  him 
*'ever  since  my  thirteenth  year."  He  induced 
his  mother  to  buy  for  him  Dyce's  edition  of  the 
Works  of  Marlowe  when  it  was  quite  a  new  book, 
and  this  was  issued  in  1850.  In  the  same  year 
he  was  in  possession  of  Massinger  and  Ford. 
Swinburne  constantly  attributed  to  himself  a  love 
and  some  budding  knowledge  of  most  of  the  rarer 
Elizabethans  at  the  extremely  precocious  age 
of  thirteen.  Again  we  must  lay  Lord  Redesdale 
under  contribution ;  the  description  refers  to  a 
slightly  later  date,  perhaps  to  1851  or  1852. 

Algernon  was  now  devouring  the  great  classics  of 
France  and  Italy.  His  memory  was  wonderful,  his 
power  of  quotation  almost  unlimited.  We  used  to  take 
long  walks  together  in  Windsor  Forest  and  in  the  Home 
Park,  where  the  famous  oak  of  Heme  the  Hunter  was 
still  standing,  a  white,  lightning-blasted  skeleton  of  a 
tree,  a  fitting  haunt  for  "fairies,  black,  grey,  green  and 


18  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

white,"  and  a  very  favourite  goal  of  our  expeditions. 
As  he  walked  along  with  that  peculiar  dancing  step  of 
his,  his  eyes  gleaming  with  enthusiasm,  and  his  hair,  like 
the  Zazzcra  of  the  old  Florentines,  tossed  about  by  the 
wind,  he  would  pour  out  in  his  unforgettable  voice  the 
treasures  which  he  had  gathered  at  his  last  sitting. 
Other  boys  would  watch  him  with  amazement,  looking 
upon  him  as  a  sort  of  inspired  elfin-something  belonging 
to  another  sphere.  .  .  .  He  carried  with  him  one  magic 
charm  —  he  was  absolutely  courageous.  He  did  not  know 
what  fear  meant. 

Swinburne  spent  four  years  and  a  half  at  school, 
and  his  attitude  to  Eton  has  been  variously  ap- 
praised. But  the  late  Vice-Provost  (Francis  Warre 
Cornish)  and  many  others  have  attested  to  the 
warmth  of  his  feeling  for  the  school,  and  the  kind- 
liness of  his  reminiscences.  As  has  been  excellently 
pointed  out,  he  was  not  made  of  the  stuff  which 
moulds  the  enthusiastic  schoolboy,  and  yet  the  old 
traditions  and  chivalrous  memories  of  Eton  sank 
into  the  depths  of  his  soul.  His  Commemoration 
Ode  of  1891  records  with  glowing  hyperbole  the 
unfading  devotion  of  a  lifetime,  and  he  never 
lost  his  tender  and  wistful  affection  for  the 
Forest,  the  Brocas,  Cuckoo  Weir,  and  the  school 
library. 

Still  the  reaches  of  the  river,  still  the  light  on  field  and  hill, 
Still  the  memories  held  aloft  as  lamps  for  hope's  young  fire 

to  fill. 
Shine,  and  while  the  light  of  England  lives  shall  shine  for 

England  still. 

These  lines  were  inscribed  on  the  great  wreath 
of  ilex  and  laurel,  sent  to  his  burial  in  1909,  "with 
grateful  homage  from  Eton,"  and  nothing  would 


ETON  19 

have  pleased  him  better  than  this  tribute  from 
the  school  to  which  he  looked  back  with  unfailing 
happiness.  Every  word  he  said  in  gratitude  to 
Eton  may  be  contrasted  with  his  bitter  references 
to  Oxford.! 

In  those  days  the  discipline  of  athletics  was 
not  rigidly  enforced,  and  Swinburne  played  no 
games.  His  references  to  football  are  perfunctory. 
We  are  told  that  he  never  possessed  a  cricket  bat. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  could  swim  and  walk  for 
ever.  As  the  sea  at  Bonchurch,  so  at  Eton  the 
river  took  up  a  great  deal  of  his  attention.  He 
"passed"  early  in  1851,  and  "passing"  means, 
as  all  Etonians  know,  much  to  the  schoolboy 
swimmer.  In  later  years  Algernon  used  to  dwell 
fondly  on  the  various  stages  of  his  apprentice- 
ship —  Cuckoo  Weir,  and  Athens,  and  Upper 
Hope,  and  finally  that  glorious  lasher  and  test 
of  the  finished  athlete,  Boveney  Weir.  In  the 
summer  holidays  of  1851,  Sir  George  Young 
stayed  with  the  Swinburnes  at  Bonchurch. 
Algernon  was  consumed  by  a  passion  for  the  sea, 
and,  in  their  daily  bathes  in  the  cove  at  East 
Dene,  used  to  make  the  gardener  push  the  jump- 
ing-stage  further  into  the  surf  than  his  friend 
and  schoolfellow,  though  a  skilful  swimmer,  quite 
enjoyed. 

Swinburne's  third  year  at  Eton  was  marked  by 
a  considerable  development  of  his  mental  powers, 
and  by  the  awakening  of  a  certain  ambition. 
In  this  year,   1852,  after  reading  much  French 

*  All  that  has  been  said  here  about  Eton  had  the  advantage  of  being 
revised  by  my  valued  and  lamented  friend,  Francis  Warre  Cornish,  who 
died  on  the  28th  August  1916.  He  was  particularly  anxious  to  repel  the 
assumption  that  Swinburne  was  not  happy  at  Eton. 


20     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

with  Henry  Tarver,  he  won  the  second  Prince 
Consort's  prize  for  French  and  ItaHan,  and  got 
*'sent  up  for  good"  for  his  Greek  elegiacs.  On 
this  last  feat  he  constantly  dwelt  with  a  fond 
complacency,  and  for  many  years  he  kept  this 
copy  of  Greek  verse  carefully.  He  lent  this 
and  an  earlier  exercise  in  elegiacs  to  Lord 
Houghton  in  1864,  but  they  are  no  longer 
forthcoming. 

In  after  years,  Swinburne  plainly  stated  that 
he  destroyed  "root  and  branch"  every  specimen 
of  his  English  verses  written  before  he  went  to 
Oxford.  It  is  certain  that  he  thought  he  had 
"burnt  every  scrap,"  yet  one  poem  of  over  two 
hundred  lines  escaped  him  and  still  exists  in  MS. 
This  is  "The  Triumph  of  Gloriana,"  which  was 
probably  written  in  1851.  It  is  an  exercise  in 
couplets,  describing  a  visit  of  Queen  Victoria  to 
Eton,  "the  Temple  of  Loyalty."  No  touch  of 
realism  enables  us  to  guess  what  particular  visit 
is  intended.  "Forth  from  the  moated  castle" 
of  Windsor  "troops  pass  out,"  escorting  "the 
fairy  dame"  to  Eton's  "secret  sanctuary,"  and 
back  again.  The  diction  of  the  piece  is  purely 
eighteenth  century,  and  seems  to  be  founded, 
like  the  versification,  on  a  reverent  study  of 
Pope's  Homer,  with  a  touch  of  The  Pleasures 
of  Memory  thrown  in.  There  is  not  the  slightest 
indication  that  the  author  was  acquainted  with 
any  of  the  poets  of  the  seventeenth  or  the  nine- 
teenth centuries.  The  verse  is  smooth,  mono- 
tonous, and  diversified  by  frequent  alexandrines. 
A  boyish  sneer  at  Harrow,  "Wrapt  in  a  mist  the 
Theban    mountain    lies,"  —  Eton    being    "bright 


ETON  21 

Athens,"  —  is  the  only  sparkle  in  a  dull  mass  of 
imitative  correctness.  Not  a  foot,  not  a  syllable, 
reveals  the  coming  genius.  The  only  quality  of 
the  coming  Swinburne  which  "The  Triumph  of 
Gloriana"  exemplifies  is  his  marvellous  power  of 
sustained  imitation  at  will. 

It  is  particularly  important  to  notice_Jthat 
almost  all  Swinburne's  literary  convictions  were 
formed  while  he^^as  at  school.  We  have  already 
seen  that  this  was  the  case  with  the  Elizabethan 
and  Jacobean__dramatists.  In  like  manner  the 
passion  for  Victor  Hugo  began  in  1852,  being 
started  by  the  reading  of  Notre-Dame  de  Paris 
with  Tarver.  Long  afterwards,  speaking  of  Hugo 
in  a  private  letter,  Swinburne  remarked,  "A  Eton 
je  m'enivrais  de  ses  drames."  Some  months 
earlier  than  this  he  had  fallen  under  the  spell  of 
Landor,  and  in  particular  of  the  Hellenics.  He 
told  Landor,  when  he  saw  him  at  Florence  in 
1864,  that  "his  poems  had  first  given  him  in- 
explicable pleasure  and  a  sort  of  blind  relief  when 
he  was  a  small  fellow  of  twelve."  He  added  that 
his  "first  recollection  of  them"  was  of  "The  Song 
of  the  Hours"  in  the  Iphigenia.  This  is  the  chorus 
beginning,  "To  each  an  urn  we  bring,"  and  it  is 
difficult  to  think  of  a  lyric  less  likely  to  appeal  to 
the  ear  of  a  child.  Nothing  could  show  more 
remarkably  the  precocious  ripeness  of  judgment 
of  this  boy  of  less  than  thirteen  than  that,  without 
contemporary  opinion  to  guide  him  or  a  friend  to 
indicate  his  course,  he  should  unwaveringly  dis- 
cover in  "The  Hamadryad"  and  "Aeon  and 
Rhodope"  beauty  of  a  higher  class  than  in  any 
of   the   idyllic   poems   of   Tennyson    which    were 


22  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

then  so  extravagantly  in  fashion.  Walter  Savage 
Landor  became  spontaneously  the 

.  .  .  name  set  for  love  apart, 
Held  lifelong  in  my  heart, 

for  whom  for  more  than  half  a  century  no  eulogy 
was  to  be  too  ardent,  no  moral  and  intellectual 
gratitude  too  tender.  It  was  under  the  auspices  of 
Marlowe,  and  Landor,  and  Hugo,  strange  idols  for 
a  little  boy  at  an  English  public  school,  that  Swin- 
burne used  to  take  long  walks  in  Windsor  Forest, 
always  with  a  single  friend,  "dancing  as  he  went, 
and  reciting  from  his  inexhaustible  memory  the 
works  which  he  had  been  studying  in  his  favourite 
sunlighted  window." 

To  such  a  nature,  holidays  afforded  the  same 
stimulus  as  school,  and  perhaps  in  a  purer  form. 
Through  these  years,  Algernon  appeared  to  those 
who  saw  him  at  home  to  be  more,  and  not  less, 
of  a  child  than  his  age  proclaimed  him.  He  led 
a  life  like  that  of  the  stainless  occupants  of 
Paradise,  in  a  perpetual  frolic  on  the  downs,  in 
the  gardens,  by  the  sea  of  the  Isle  of  Wight  or  of 
Northumberland.  This  felicity  was  diversified 
by  visits  to  Northcourt,  and  to  Ashburnham 
Place,  where  Algernon  adopted  airs  of  chivalrous 
protection  to  his  little  cousin  and  playfellow, 
Lady  Katherine,  with  whom,  each  mounted  on  a 
robust  pony,  he  took  endless  rides  in  the  forest. 
Another  cousin,  Mrs.  Disney  Leith,  has  recorded 
that  he  was  now,  as  always,  a  reckless  although 
a  fearless  rider,  and  he  was  not  infrequently 
thrown  from  having  lapsed  into  a  dreamy  half- 
unconsciousness,  but  never  with  serious  results. 


ETON  23 

Charles  Dickens,  staying  at  Bonchurch,  noted 
with  approval  *'the  golden-haired  lad  of  the 
Swinburnes,"  who  played  so  gracefully  and  gaily 
with  his  own  boys.  All  the  evidence  points  to 
the  fairy-like  sprightliness  and  unearthly  charm 
of  this  wonderful  child  over  whose  bliss  no 
shadow  of  a  cloud  had  yet  passed,  or  seemed 
likely  to  pass. 

The  great  simplicity  of  the  boy,  and  his 
absence  of  affectation,  rendered  still  more 
singular  the  contrast  between  this  puerile,  or 
almost  infantile,  gaiety  and  insouciance  and  the 
intense  seriousness  of  his  attitude  towards  the 
intellectual  and  imaginative  domains.  This  fay 
tripping  in  the  sunshine  was  already,  in  several 
directions,  erudite  far  beyond  his  years,  and  in 
particular  he  had  accepted,  with  perfect  con- 
sciousness and  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  ambitions, 
aims,  adorations,  which  were  diametrically  op- 
posed to  the  experience  and  hopes  of  all  who  sur- 
rounded him.  It  was  no  part  of  the  scheme 
of  happiness  which  his  family  planned  for  him 
that  he  should  be  a  republican  and  a  poet  of  the 
Hugo  and  Landor  type. 

Meanwhile,  it  is  not  certain  in  what  year, 
but  probably  in  1852,  Lady  Jane  Swinburne 
solemnly  presented  him  to  one  from  whom 
no  dangerous  influences  could  be  anticipated, 
and  whose  example  might  be  advantageous. 
This  was  Samuel  Rogers,  who  had  refused 
the  Laureateship  at  the  death  of  Wordsworth 
on  account  of  his  own  advanced  age.  Lady 
Jane  said  that  she  had  ventured  to  bring  her 
son    to    visit    Mr.    Rogers,    "because   he   thinks 


24  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

more  of  poets  than  of  any  other  people  in  the 
world."  The  sagacious  old  author  of  The 
Pleasures  of  Memory  was  greatly  touched,  and 
at  the  close  of  the  interview  he  solemnly  laid  his 
hand  on  Algernon's  head,  and  said,  "I  prophesy 
that  you  will  be  a  poet  too!"  This  visit  did 
not  lead  Swinburne  to  reject  Odes  et  Ballades  in 
favour  of  Italy,  but  it  stimulated  his  sense  of 
the  hieratic  dignity  of  poets.  Mr.  Rogers  was 
perhaps  hardly  a  primate  of  song,  but  he  was 
accredited  in  the  service  of  Apollo,  and  he  was 
extremely  venerable.  The  interview,  by  Swin- 
burne's own  later  declaration,  confirmed  the  boy 
in  his  poetic  calling. 

It  has  been  said  that  at  Eton  he  had  an  extra- 
ordinarily wide  knowledge  of  the  Greek  poets,  and 
that  he  read  them  with  ease  in  the  original.  His 
closest  school-friend  insists  that  this  is  incorrect, 
or  should  be  reserved  for  the  record  of  his  advanced 
Oxford  life.  We  are  told  that  he  left  Eton  know- 
ing no  more  Greek  than  any  intelligent  school- 
boy should,  and  the  unquestioned  success  of  his 
elegiacs  was  due  more  to  his  extraordinary  gift  of 
imitation  than  to  any  precocious  familiarity  with 
the  Greek  language.  The  mediocrity  of  his  record, 
on  arriving  at  Oxford,  bears  out  this  view.  It  is 
certain,  however,  that  he  was  devoted  to  that 
charming  anthology,  the  old  Eton  Poetae  Graeci,  to 
which  he  owed  his  earliest  introduction  to  Theo- 
critus and  Alcaeus,  and  on  which  was  founded  his 
lifelong  passion  for  Sappho.  Long  afterwards,  as 
Mr.  A.  G.  C.  Liddell  has  reported,  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  say  that  the  Poetae  Graeci  "had  played 
a  large  part  in  fostering  the  love  of  poetry  in  his 


ETON  25 

mind."  He  is  said  by  another  schoolfellow  to 
have  complained  that  he  found  Theocritus  "the 
hardest  Greek  lesson  of  the  week,"  the  lyric  poets 
already  attracting  him  far  more  vividly  than  the 
bucolic.  His  appreciation  of  Latin  poetry  was 
less  cordial  than  his  love  of  Greek,  and  remained 
so  all  his  life.  Catullus  alone  gave  him  pleasure 
of  an  ecstatic  kind.  Horace  he  disliked,  and 
Lucretius  bored  him.  In  after  years,  when 
Raper  expressed  wonder  that  Swinburne  did  not 
enjoy  the  poetry  of  Virgil,  greatest  of  all  masters 
of  alliteration  and  assonation,  he  replied  that  it 
was  due  to  his  having  been  made  to  learn  that 
poet  by  heart  at  Eton.  He  said  he  liked  to  wait 
till  a  poet  learned  him  by  heart,  and  took  pos- 
session of  his  soul  as  Sappho  had  done.t  He 
attributed  his  want  of  sympathy  with  most  of 
the  Latin  classics  to  his  having  been  forced  to 
repeat  them  under  compulsion. ' 

The  accounts  of  Algernon's  behaviour  in  child- 
hood and  as  a  schoolboy  have  reached  us  through 
the  memories  of  those  who  regarded  him  with 
love  and  admiration,  but  they  are  unanimous  in 
representing  him  as  unaggressive  and  self-con- 
tained, gentle,  courteous,  and  gay.  Lord  Redes- 
dale  tells  me  that  at  school  he  was  what  is 
picturesquely  called  "a  bag  of  nerves,"  and  that 
the  smallest  obstacle  ruffled  him.  But,  although 
so  irritable,  he  was  not  overbearing.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  the  arrogance  which  marred 
certain  phases  of  his  middle  life,  was  absent 
in  his  childhood  as  it  vanished  from  his  se- 
rene old  age.  These  superficial  faults,  excres- 
cences upon  his  native  character,  were  without 


26     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

question  the  result  of  a  disturbance  of  his  nervous 
system,  which  had  not  begun  at  Eton.  From 
earhest  childhood  he  had  the  trick,  whenever  he 
grew  the  least  excited,  of  stifflj^  drawing  down 
his  arms  from  his  shoulders  and  giving  quick 
vibrating  jerks  with  his  hands.  His  family 
always  insisted  that  he  spoilt  his  shoulders  and 
made  them  sloping  bj"  this  trick  which  dragged 
them  down.  If  he  happened  to  be  seated  at  a 
moment  of  excitement,  he  would  jerk  his  legs 
and  twist  his  feet  also,  though  with  less  violence. 
At  such  times  his  face  would  grow  radiant  with 
a  rapt  expression,  very  striking  to  witness.  All 
this  developed  itself  in  early  childhood,  and 
alarmed  his  mother,  who  applied  to  a  specialist 
for  advice.  After  a  close  examination  the 
physician's  report  was  that  these  motions  resulted 
from  "an  excess  of  electric  vitality,"  and  that 
any  attempt  to  stop  them  would  be  harmful. 
Accordingly,  to  the  very  end  of  his  life,  whenever 
Swinburne  was  happy,  or  interested,  or  amused, 
he  jerked  his  arms  and  fluttered  his  little  delicate 
hands. 

A  certain  change  took  place  in  Swinburne's 
character  at  the  opening  of  his  last  year  at  school. 
He  became  less  amenable  to  discipline  and  idler 
at  his  work.  Francis  Warre  Cornish,  when  he  was 
a  new  boy  early  in  1853,  had  the  poet  pointed  out 
to  him  as  "Mad  Swinburne,"  and  he  tells  me  that 
he  has  never  forgotten  the  impression  he  received 
of  the  strange  figure.  Through  the  summer 
of  1853  Swinburne  had  increasing  trouble  with 
Joynes  of  a  rebellious  kind,  and  in  consequence 
of   some   representations   he   did    not    return    to 


ETON  27 

Eton,  although  nothing  had  been  said  during 
the  previous  half  about  his  leaving,  and  although 
at  the  last  he  seemed  to  be  doing  particularly 
well.  When  he  left  school  he  was  within  a  few 
places  of  the  headmaster's  division.  He  had 
now  entered  his  seventeenth  year. 


CHAPTER   II 

OXFORD 

(1853-1859) 

Algernon  Swinburne  left  school  in  the  summer 
of  1853,  and  he  matriculated  at  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  on  the  24th  of  January  1856.  How  he 
spent  these  two  years  and  a  half  is  not  at  present 
very  clear.  He  was  sixteen  when  he  left  Eton 
and  he  was  nearly  nineteen  when  he  went  to  the 
University.  These  are  important  years  in  the 
life  of  most  active  and  original  minds,  but  we 
have  no  evidence  that  they  left  much  trace  upon 
his.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  at  the  back  . 
of  his  head,  when  he  made  further  stay  at  Eton  / 
impossible  for  him,  was  the  passionate  wish  to  be 
trained  for  the  army.  He  would  have  turned  out 
to  be  a  singular  field-officer,  it  must  be  presumed, 
yet  cavalry  was  w^hat  he  was  after.  He  saw  him- 
self galloping  to  the  destruction  of  kings  on  a 
charger  as  black  as  night.  He  said  himself  that 
the  Balaklava  Charge  (Oct.  25,  1854)  "eclipsed 
all  other  visions,"  and  the  date  of  this  proves  that 
the  desire  to  be  a  beau  sabreur  was  no  passing  one. 
"To  be  prepared  for  such  a  chance  as  that  was 
the  one  dream  of  my  life."  And,  so  late  as  1891, 
he  told  Edward  Burne-Jones  that  "the  cavalry 

28 


OXFORD  29 

service"  had  been  the  ideal  of  his  early  hopes. 
His  mother  was  not  altogether  against  the  plan, 
and  on  one  occasion,  probably  late  in  1854,  the 
question  was  finally  pressed  by  Algernon  to  a 
family  decision.  The  parents  took  three  days 
to  think  the  matter  over,  and  then  told  the  boy  it 
could  not  be.  "My  father  resolutely  stamped 
out  my  ambition  for  a  soldier's  work,"  on  account, 
mainly,  of  the  slightness  and  shortness  of  his 
son's  figure.  But  Swinburne  continued  to  regret 
the  military  profession,  until  some  twenty  years 
afterwards,  when,  in  commenting  to  me  on  his 
growing  deafness,  he  added  with  a  sigh,  *'So 
that,  after  all,  I  suppose  I  should  not  have  done 
well  to  be  a  soldier  !" 

He  was  prepared  for  Oxford,  in  a  desultory 
way,  by  the  Rev.  John  Wilkinson,  perpetual 
curate  of  Cambo  in  Northumberland,  which  was 
his  grandfather's  parish.  This  worthy  man 
lamented  that  the  lad  was  too  clever  by  half, 
and  would  never  study.  By  far  the  greater  part 
of  these  years  seems  to  have  been  spent  out 
of  doors,  on  the  Northumbrian  moor  and  sea- 
coast,  in  the  forest  at  Ashburnham,  or  upon  the 
southern  shores  of  the  Isle  of  Wight.  Around 
Capheaton  the  boy  rode  indefatigably,  often  in 
the  sympathetic  company  of  a  cousin,  and  "many 
a  masterpiece  of  the  Victorian  poets  was  recited  — 
during  a  spirited  canter  or  a  leisurely  saunter  on 
horseback  through  those  beautiful  Northumbrian 
roads  or  fields."  About  the  middle  of  Christmas 
1854  (if  we  may  trust  the  reference  to  Balaklava), 
it  suddenly  came  upon  him  that  it  was  all  very 
well  to  fancy  or  dream  of  "deadly  danger"  and 


30  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

forlorn  hopes  and  cavalry  charges,  when  he  had 
never  run  any  greater  risk  than  a  football  "rouge," 
and  so  he  determined  to  scale  the  Culver  as  "a 
chance  of  testing  my  nerve  in  face  of  death  which 
could  not  be  surpassed."  Culver  Cliff  is  the 
eastern  headland  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  a  great 
face  of  chalk  picturesquely  striated  with  bands 
of  flint.  It  was  a  precipice  impregnable  from  the 
sea-foot,  or  at  least  Swinburne  believed  that  it 
had  never  been  so  climbed  by  a  human  being. 
He  performed  the  feat,  which  he  described  in  a 
letter  published  by  Mrs.  Disney  Leith  shortly 
after  his  death.  The  story  is  admirably  told, 
and  closes  with  a  domestic  touch  which  is  delight- 
ful. The  deed  of  daring  could  not  be  concealed 
from  his  mother : 

Of  course  she  wanted  to  know  why  I  had  done  such 
a  thing,  and  when  I  told  her  she  laughed  a  short,  sweet 
laugh  most  satisfactory  to  the  young  ear,  and  said, 
"Nobody  ever  thought  you  were  a  coward,  my  boy." 
I  said  that  was  all  very  well,  but  how  could  I  tell  till 
I  tried?  "But  you  won't  do  it  again?"  she  said.  I 
replied,  of  course  not  —  where  could  be  the  fun  ?  I 
knew  now  that  it  could  be  done,  and  I  only  wanted  to  do 
it  because  nobody  thought  it  could. 

A  good  deal  of  highly  autobiographical  colour 
may  be  gleaned  from  the  drama  of  The  Sisters 
(1892),  where  Redgie  Clavering,  to  those  who 
know  him,  is  largely  Algernon  Swinburne's  re- 
collection of  himself  as  a  youth  of  eighteen. 
Here  we  have  the  tendency  "to  ride  forbidden 
horses,  and  break  bounds  on  days  forbidden"; 
the  passion  for  "a  swim  against  a  charging  sea," 


OXFORD  31 

until  *'a  breaker  got  you  down";  the  ''light, 
soft,  shining,  curly  hair,  too  boyish  for  his  years"  ; 
the  study  of  "Dodsley's  great  old  plays";  the 
fretting  at  an  enforced  idleness.  The  scene  is 
laid  alternately  in  Northumberland,  and  in  a 
southern  garden  by  the  sea,  full  of  nightingales 
and  roses.  But  above  all,  here  is  the  hero,  not 
long  come  from  Eton,  full  of  poetry  and  ambition, 
but  yearning  more  than  for  all  other  things  for 
the  experience  of  a  soldier  or  a  sailor,  and 
fuming  because  he  is  considered  "not  old  enough 
to  serve."  And  there  are  other  points,  even 
more  intimate,  in  the  sum  of  which  the  figure 
of  Reginald  Clavering  is  revealed  as  a  close  and 
conscious  portrait  of  the  poet  as  he  saw  himself, 
looking  back  over  thirty -seven  years.  In  this 
we  are  not  left  to  conjecture,  for  in  writing  to 
Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  (Oct.  16,  1892)  he  said  that 
he  "never  wrote  anything  so  autobiographical  as 
Redgie's  speech  about  Northumberland  in  the 
Eton  midsummer  holidays"  : 

The  crowning  county  of  England  —  yes,  the  best !  .  .  . 
Have  you  and  I,  then,  raced  across  its  moors 
Till  horse  and  boy  were  well-nigh  mad  with  glee 
So  often,  summer  and  winter,  home  from  school. 
And  not  found  that  out  ?     Take  the  streams  away, 
The  country  would  be  sweeter  than  the  south 
Anywhere  :   give  the  south  our  streams,  would  it 
Be  fit  to  match  our  borders  ?     Flower  and  crag, 
Burnside  and  boulder,  heather  and  whin,  —  you  don't 
Dream  you  can  match  them  south  of  this  ?     And  then 
If  all  the  unwater'd  country  were  as  flat 
As  the  Eton  playing-fields,  give  it  back  our  burns, 
And  set  them  singing  through  a  sad  south  world 
And  try  to  make  them  dismal  as  its  fens,  — 
They  won't  be. 


32     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

And  to  Edward  Burne-Jones  he  wrote  (Oct. 
15,  1892),  "I  think  I  have  succeeded  in  making  a 
nice  young  fellow  out  of  my  own  recollections 
and  aspirations." 

Swinburne  had  passed  the  age  of  eighteen 
when,  in  1855,  he  went  abroad  for  the  first  time, 
spending  several  weeks  in  Germany  in  the 
company  of  his  uncle.  General  Thomas  Ashburn- 
ham  (d.  1872).  He  was  not  then  nor  in  later  life 
attracted  by  the  German  language  or  literature, 
and  his  works  contain  scarce  a  reference  to  that 
country.  What  did  on  this  occasion  impress  him 
was  the  return  voyage  from  Ostend  (by  a  slip  of 
memory  called  "Calais"  in  a  poem  of  his  old  age). 
About  midnight  the  packet  was  caught  in  mid- 
channel  by  a  thunderstorm  strong  enough  to 
delay  her  some  three  good  hours  over  the  due  time. 
This  storm  haunted  the  poet's  memory,  and  was 
described  by  him  repeatedly,  in  prose  and  verse, 
almost  until  the  end  of  his  life.  The  version 
given  in  his  review  of  UHomme  qui  rit,  written 
fourteen  years  after  the  experience,  is  perhaps  the 
finest  specimen  extant  of  Swinburne's  descrip- 
tive prose,  with  its  "race  and  riot  of  lights,  beauti- 
ful and  rapid  as  a  course  of  shining  Oceanides 
along  the  tremulous  floor  of  the  sea."  He  was 
fond  of  saying  that  the  spectacle  of  this  storm 
touched  his  nerves  "with  a  more  vivid  pleasure 
than  music  or  wine,"  and  that  it  raised  his  spirit 
"to  the  very  summit  of  vision  and  delight." 
The  recurrent  eft'ect  upon  him  of  this  particular 
scene  is  characteristic  Swinburne  did  not  live, 
like  Wordsworth,  in  a  perpetual  communion  with 
nature,  but  exceptional  and  even  rare  moments 


OXFORD  33 

of  concentrated  observation  wakened  in  him  an 
ecstasy  which  he  was  then  careful  to  brood  upon, 
to  revive,  and  perhaps  at  last  to  exaggerate.  As 
a  rule  he  saw  little  of  the  world  around  him,  but 
what  he  did  see  was  presented  to  him  in  a  blaze 
of  lime-light. 

Mrs.  Disney  Leith  informs  me  that  Algernon 
was  finally  prepared  for  college  by  James  Russell 
Woodford  (1820-85),  afterwards  Bishop  of  Ely, 
but  then  vicar  of  Kempsford,  near  Fairford 
in  Gloucestershire.  I  remember  Swinburne's 
speaking  of  Woodford  with  great  cordiality  some 
twenty  years  later. 

During  the  three  years  and  a  half  which  Swin- 
burne spent  at  Oxford,  Robert  Scott  was  the 
Master  of  his  college.  But  there  is  no  evidence 
that  he  impressed  his  individuality  on  Swinburne 
in  any  degree  whatever,  and,  as  Lord  Bryce 
reminds  me,  the  head  of  an  Oxford  College  in 
those  days  was  very  little  in  touch  with  under- 
graduates. In  1856  the  peculiarly  favorable 
conditions  afterwards  enjoyed  by  Balliol  had 
hardly  begun  to  develop.  Jowett,  who  had 
failed  to  secure  the  Mastership  in  1854,  had  been 
appointed  Regius  Professor  of  Greek  in  the 
following  year,  but  at  the  moment  when  Swin- 
burne appeared  at  the  University,  Jowett  was 
still  the  centre  of  disagreeable  contention,  and 
exposed  to  attacks  on  the  ground  of  heresy.  He 
was  becoming  more  and  more  valued  by  the 
younger  dons  in  Balliol  itself,  but  his  schemes  for 
reform  were  still  much  debated  and  his  personal 
intervention  opposed.  It  was  later  that  Jowett 
began  to  take  a  place  in  Swinburne's  life,  and  it 


34     ALGERNON   CHARLES   S\YINBURNE 

is  to  be  observed  that  the  latter  alwaj'^s  insisted 
upon  a  distinction  which  throws  an  important 
light  upon  his  attitude  to  the  college.  He  used 
to  say,  very  firmly,  that  the  Master  of  Balliol 
was  officially  a  stranger  to  him,  but  Mr.  Jowett 
an  honoured  and  lifelong  friend. 

Of  Swinburne's  conduct  as  a  freshman  little 
has  as  yet  been  revealed,  and  perhaps  there  was 
little  to  reveal. 

The  earliest  impressions  of  him  which  I  have 
been  able  to  collect  are  those  of  Mr.  Donald 
Crawford,  who  has  been  obliging  enough  to  put 
down  his  recollections  for  me.  Mr.  Crawford 
came  to  Balliol  in  the  October  term  of  1856, 
and  made  Swinburne's  acquaintance  immediately. 
They  belonged  to  different  college  groups,  but 
they  were  in  the  habit  of  taking  Sunday  walks 
together.  Swinburne  took  no  part  in  the  ordi- 
nary outdoor  amusements,  and  never  appeared 
at  wine-parties  or  at  breakfasts ;  he  remained 
much  in  his  rooms.  It  was  presently  announced 
that  he  was  "writing  poetry,"  and  even  "en- 
gaged upon  a  tragedy."  (This  was  doubtless 
much  later.)  Fragments  of  his  verse  were 
occasionally  repeated,  but  were  "not  much 
appreciated  by  the  rank  and  file  of  the  college," 
and  indeed  were  thought  very  ridiculous.  Mr. 
Crawford's  recollection  of  Swinburne's  appear- 
ance during  his  first  year  at  college  is  valuable : 

A  slight  girlish  figure,  below  the  middle  height,  with 
a  great  shock  of  red  hair,  which  seemed  almost  to  touch 
his  narrow  sloping  shoulders.  He  had  the  pallor  which 
often  goes  with  red  hair.  There  was  a  dainty  grace  about 
his  appearance,  but  it  was  disappointing  that,  like  some 


OXFORD  35 

figure  in  a  pre-Rapliaelite  canvas,  where  he  would  not 
have  been  out  of  place,  there  was  a  want  of  youthful  fresh- 
ness in  his  face.  He  walked  delicately,  like  Agag,  with  a 
mounting  gait,  as  if  picking  his  steps.  He  had  a  pleasant 
musical  voice,  and  his  manner  and  address,  slightly  shy  and 
reserved,  had  a  particular  charm  of  refinement  and  good 
breeding. 

He  seems,  apart  from  his  striking  physical 
appearance,  to  have  attracted  no  sort  of  attention 
at  Oxford,  either  among  undergraduates  or  dons. 
One  contemporary  tells  me  that  he  lost  about 
this  time  the  fairy  delicacy  of  his  features  and 
complexion,  and  became  "very  ugly";  the  same 
informant  says  that  he  "recovered  his  good 
looks  later."  But  this  is  categorically  denied  by 
Professor  T.  E.  Holland,  who  writes  to  me,  "I 
never  thought  him  ugly,  or  that  his  appearance 
altered."  It  is  vaguely  reported  that  he  was, 
as  a  freshman,  "very  reserved"  and  "rather 
sullen";  and  still  more  vaguely  that  he  passed 
through  a  recrudescence  of  Anglican  ritualism. 
Professor  Holland  remembers  that  he  first  heard 
of  him  as  "a  most  promising  young  fellow,"  who,  it 
was  feared,  had  developed  an  admiration  of 
Charles  I.,  and  a  tendency  toward  High  Church 
practices,  "a  brand,  as  it  were,  to  be  plucked  out 
of  the  fire  by  the  Old  Mortality."  This  is  possible, 
for  many  of  his  contemporaries  went  through  it, 
but  on  the  other  hand  Lord  Bryce  saw  no  trace  of 
it  in  1858  when  he  first  knew  him,  and  he  now 
doubts  it.  Keats  has  reminded  us  that  "the 
imagination  of  a  boy  is  healthy,  and  the  mature 
imagination  of  a  man  is  healthy;  but  there  is  a 
space  of  life  between,  in  which  the  soul  is  in  a 


36     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

ferment."  This  was  doubtless  the  case  with  Swin- 
burne at  the  age  of  nineteen.  He  would  feel  him- 
self solitary  and  undecided,  conscious  of  latent 
powers  which  nobody  suspected,  and  of  ambitions 
which  nobody  comprehended.  For  the  ordinary 
pursuits  of  young  men  at  college  he  had  a  silent 
disdain,  and  did  not  encourage  tutorial  hopes  by 
any  application  to  the  round  of  studies.  Mean- 
while, he  was  following  his  own  course,  devouring 
the  literature  of  five  languages  and  revolving  a 
vast  system  of  dreams. 

Before  leaving  home  for  Oxford,  Swinburne 
burned  "every  scrap  of  MS.  he  had  in  the  world," 
and  during  his  life  as  a  freshman  we  do  not  hear 
of  his  attempting  composition,  for  Mr.  Crawford's 
recollection  probably  refers  to  1858. 

It  was  much  to  be  observed  that  in  later  life, 
though  he  spoke  often  and  in  affectionate  terms 
of  Eton,  Swinburne  was  never  betrayed  into  the 
smallest  commendation  of  Oxford.  He  was, 
indeed,  unwilling  to  mention  the  University,  and 
if  obliged  to  do  so,  it  was  with  a  gesture  of 
impatience  and  a  reference  to  "the  foggy  damp 
of  Oxonian  atmosphere."  Long  afterwards,  in 
late  middle  life,  he  railed  against  Matthew  Arnold 
for  his  "effusive  Oxonolatry,"  and  earlier  he 
had  contrived  to  analyse  and  commend  "The 
Scholar-Gipsy"  and  "Thyrsis"  without  so  much 
as  naming  the  "sweet  city  with  her  dreaming 
spires"  which  is  the  very  substance  of  those 
poems.  He  used  to  express  the  view  that  an 
Oxford  resident  never  dies,  having  never  lived, 
but  ceases.  Much  misapprehension,  much  ex- 
asperation,  must   have   gone   to   build   up   Swin- 


OXFORD  37 

burne's  dislike  of  Oxford,  for  he  yielded  as  little 
as  Dry  den  did  to  "the  gross  flattery  of  uni- 
versities," and  the  more  he  knew  of  Oxford  the 
more  he  seemed  to  hate  it.  He  disliked  the 
ecclesiastical  side  thoroughly;  and  of  course 
was  out  of  sympathy  with  ordinary  under- 
graduate life.  Lord  Bryce  remembers  seeing  him 
once  in  a  canoe,  navigating  it  with  considerable 
difficulty. 

Towards  the  beginning  of  his  second  year,  he 
began  to  make  friends,  w^ho  were  all,  so  far  as  we 
can  perceive,  older  than  himself.  Apparently 
the  earliest  of  these  was  Edwin  Hatch,  who,  a 
nonconformist  undergraduate  of  Pembroke  Col- 
lege, had  recently  entered  the  Church  of  England, 
and  was  attracting  a  good  deal  of  notice  in  Oxford. 
Hatch  was  already  writing  much  for  periodicals 
and  dictionaries,  and  must  have  been  the  earliest 
practising  man  of  letters  known  to  Swinburne. 
He  was  a  great  organiser,  and  he  had  instituted 
in  his  college  a  sort  of  Brotherhood  of  Letters,  in 
which  Swinburne  shyly  took  some  part.  Hatch 
introduced  him  to  a  future  poet  and  a  future 
painter,  to  Richard  Watson  Dixon  and  to  Spencer 
Stanhope ;  but  each  of  these  men  was  Swinburne's 
senior  by  four  years.  John  Nichol  of  Glasgow, 
since  1855  at  Balliol  College,  was  also  of  their  age, 
but  he  formed  a  closer  tie  with  Swinburne, 
founded  on  deeper  community  of  interest  than 
Hatch  showed.  Another  very  early  friend  was 
Thomas  Hill  Green,  the  future  philosopher,  who 
was  a  year  older  than  Swinburne,  and  had 
entered  Balliol  College  in  October  1855.  Green, 
who  was  inactive  and  shy,  gave  as  yet  to  the 


38  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

dons  little  promise  of  a  brilliant  future,  but 
he  and  Swinburne  had  a  good  deal  to  say 
to  one  another,  and  much  fun  to  communicate, 
during  the  long  country  walks  in  which  they 
both  delighted.  Swinburne  had  some  few  still 
older  friends  in  Oxford.  One,  for  whom  he 
expressed  a  warm  admiration,  was  Manuel  John 
Johnson,  the  astronomer  (1805-59),  then  keeper 
of  the  Radcliffe  Observatory.  It  was  Nichol  who 
drew  the  attention  of  Jowett  to  Swinburne's 
remarkable  qualities ;  and  by  its  own  maturity 
and  fulness  the  mind  of  Nichol  exercised  a  strong 
influence  over  that  of  Swinburne,  not  altogether 
in  a  useful  direction,  since,  while  the  ardour  and 
intellectual  independence  of  the  young  Scotchman 
were  sympathetic,  he  was  ready  to  encourage  and 
so  exaggerate  some  of  Swinburne's  weaknesses. 

On  the  other  hand,  Swinburne  attributed  to 
Nichol's  teaching  a  steadying  influence  on  his 
own  intellect,  and  in  1859  declared  that  he  had 
received  "valuable  help  in  the  study  of  Logic" 
from  him,  naively  adding  that  this  was  "in  a 
w  space  of  time  necessarily  short."  Nichol  did  not 
make  many  friends,  and  he  was  afflicted  by  a 
sort  of  Carlylese  moroseness ;  but  later  on  this 
passed  away,  and  Nichol  became  prominent  in  the 
counsels  of  the  Old  Mortality  Society,  which  was 
founded  by  him  in  November  1856,  and  which  at 
first  circled  round  himself.  It  was  founded  for 
the  purpose  of  affording  to  its  members  "such 
intellectual  pastime  and  recreation  as  should 
seem  most  suitable  and  agreeable."  To  belong  to 
the  Old  Mortality  became  a  considerable  distinc- 
tion, for  the  six  original  members  were  —  besides 


OXFORD  39 

Nichol  and  Swinburne  —  Dicey,  George  Rankine 
Luke  ("our  chief  of  men  in  our  college  days," 
whose  career  of  high  promise  was  cut  short  by 
drowning  in  the  Isis  in  1862),  George  Birkbeck 
Hill,  and  Algernon  Grenfell ;  while  T.  H.  Green, 
Pater,  J.  A.  Symonds,  Bywater,  Caird,  and 
those  eminent  survivors,  Professor  Holland  and 
Lord  Bryce,  were  afterwards  included.^  The 
society  met  in  one  another's  rooms  once  a  week 
in  term-time,  and  read  either  essays  or  passages 
chosen  by  the  host.  The  meetings.  Professor 
Holland  tells  me,  invariably  took  place  after 
dinner,  over  cups  of  coffee.  Although  Nichol 
avoided  general  companionship,  he  was  very 
assiduous  in  cultivating  his  particular  friends. 
Who  these  were  have  just  been  mentioned,  and 
there  exists  a  large  photographic  group  of  them, 
where  Swinburne  is  discovered  near  the  centre  of 
the  front,  a  prominence  which  he  owes,  no  doubt, 
to  his  diminutive  size.  Of  his  contributions  to 
debate  none  are  preserved,  but  we  learn  that  on 
the  13th  of  February  1857,  during  the  absence  of 
Nichol,  who  was  ill,  Swinburne  praised  the  satiric 
genius  of  Dryden  to  the  detriment  of  that  of 
Pope  and  Byron. 

Lord  Bryce  remembers  a  meeting  in  Swin- 
burne's rooms  in  1858,  at  which  the  host  read 
Browning's  essay  prefixed  to  the  forged  Letters 
of  Shelley;    and  afterwards  repeated,  or  rather 

1  Professor  T.  E.  Holland  has  very  kindly  given  me  a  list  of  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Old  Mortality.  "A  body  of  twenty  rules  was  adopted  at  a 
meeting  held  on  the  2nd  of  May,  1857,  when  the  discussion  turned  upon 
Hume's  Essay  in  defence  of  Suicide."  The  Society  seems  to  have  come 
to  an  end  in  1876,  at  a  dinner  at  All  Souls  College,  to  which  Swinburne  was 
invited,  but  after  accepting,  failed  to  turn  up. 


40  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

chanted,  to  his  friends  a  few  of  Browning's  poems, 
in  particular,  "The  Statue  and  the  Bust,"  "The 
Heretic's  Tragedy,"  and  "Bishop  Blougram's 
Apology."  Of  those  present  only  Swinburne 
himself  and  Nichol  had,  so  far  as  Lord  Brvce  can 
recall,  ever  read  any  of  Browning's  poems.  Two 
or  three  years  later  everybody  was  reading  them. 
Swinburne  had  in  those  days  an  immense  admira- 
tion for  Ruskin.  Lord  Bryce  recollects  that  one 
Sunday  afternoon,  when  he  dropped  in  upon  him, 
Swinburne  took  down  a  volume  and  read  aloud, 
with  admirable  expression,  a  long  description  of 
an  old  boat  lying  on  the  shore,  and  of  all  it  had 
been  and  had  seen. 

Already  Swinburne  knew  far  more  of  English 
poetical  literature  than  either  Nichol  or  any  other 
of  the  group,  and  stood  alone  among  them  as  widely 
read  in  French  and  Italian.  Nichol  once  remarked 
to  Lord  Bryce,  "He  is  the  one  among  us  who 
certainly  has  genius."  No  one  of  his  friends  of  the 
Old  Mortality  doubted  that;  the  only  question 
was  whether  his  strange  erratic  mind  would  ever 
concentrate  itself  upon  the  production  of  a  large 
piece  of  work.  Already  Swinburne  was  curiously 
detached  from  most  of  the  common  interests  of 
humanity.  T.  H.  Green  was  accustomed  to 
chuckle  as  he  described  a  meeting  of  the  Old 
Mortality,  where  he  read  an  essay  on  the  develop- 
ment of  Christian  Dogma.  He  happened  to  look 
up  once  from  his  paper,  and  nearly  burst  out 
laughing  at  the  sight  of  Swinburne,  whose  face 
wore  an  expression  compounded  of  unutterable 
ennui  and  naif  astonishment  that  men  whom  he 
respected  could  take  interest  in  such  a  subject. 


OXFORD  41 

The  year  1857  saw  a  considerable  ripening  of 
Swinburne's  intellectual  powers.  He  hesitated 
now  no  longer,  but  took  up  the  attitude  towards 
life  in  which  he  was  to  persist.  His  wonderful 
old  grandfather  at  Capheaton  encouraged  him 
to  adopt  extreme  views  in  politics,  telling  the 
lad  how,  in  years  long  past,  he  had  "repeatedly" 
made  himself  "liable  to  be  impeached  and  executed 
for  high  treason"  by  the  outspoken  republicanism 
of  his  sentiments.  The  enthusiasm  so  engendered 
took  a  somewhat  ludicrous  shape  in  Algernon's 
private  behaviour,  for  Mr.  Lyulph  Stanley  (now 
Lord  Sheffield),  who  entered  Balliol  College  a 
little  later  than  he,  remembers  that  the  poet  had 
a  portrait  of  Mazzini  hanging  in  the  place  of 
honour  in  his  sitting-room,  and  that  he  declaimed 
verses  before  it,  with  gestures  of  adoring  suppli- 
cation. 

In  all  this  advanced  republicanism,  if  his 
grandfather  encouraged  him,  he  was  still  more 
actively  abetted  by  John  Nichol,  who  was  a 
pronounced  disciple  of  Mazzini  and  loathed 
Napoleon  III.  Professor  A.  V.  Dicey  writes : 
"As  regards  Louis  Napoleon  we  were  all  agreed. 
I  see  little  reason  to  think  that  we  were  wrong 
in  our  general  estimate  of  the  Emperor;  but 
there  is  something  amusing,  as  I  look  back  upon 
them,  in  the  youthful  vehemence  of  our  denuncia- 
tions." There  was  no  support  of  Napoleon  III. 
in  the  "Old  Mortality,"  but  Swinburne  outdid 
all  the  rest  in  his  fantastic  violence.  Professor 
Holland  writes  me:  "I  well  recollect  his  dancing 
round  the  table,  screaming,  abuse,  and,  I  think, 
advocating   the   assassination   of   the   Emperor." 


42     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Some  of  the  verses  that  he  intoned  before  the 
portrait  may  doubtless  be  identified  with  the 
Ode  to  Mazzini,  found  incomplete  after  Swin- 
burne's death,  and  printed  in  1909  by  Mr.  T.  J. 
Wise.^  By  internal  evidence,  this  irregular  Pin- 
daric can  be  dated  with  confidence  in  the  spring 
of  1857.  It  shows  the  influence  of  Shelley, 
but  already  there  is  a  personal  note  of  Swinburne 
in  it,  and  some  felicitous  passages,  such  as : 

The  winds,  that  fold  around 

Her  soft  enchanted  ground 
Their  wings  of  music,  sadden  into  song ; 

The  holy  stars  await 

Some  dawn  of  glimmering  fate 
In  silence  —  but  the  time  of  pain  is  long. 

But  here  no  comfort  stills 
This  sorrow  that  o'erclouds  the  purple  hills. 

About  the  same  time,  doubtless  through  the 
help  of  Hatch,  Swinburne  appeared  in  print  for 
the  first  time,  contributing  an  article  on  Congreve 
to  a  popular  dictionary.  This,  still  more  than 
the  Ode  to  Mazzini,  is  stiflt  and  rather  dry ;  it 
gives  no  sort  of  promise  of  its  author's  coming 
aflfluence  of  phrase. 

At  the  outset  of  the  Long  Vacation  of  1857, 
William  Morris,  who  had  been  in  London  for 
some  months,  reappeared  in  Oxford  in  connec- 
tion with  an  ambitious  artistic  scheme.  He 
visited  the  Brotherhood  at  Pembroke  College, 
and  Hatch  presented  Swinburne  to  him  at  Birkbeck 
Hill's  rooms  on  the  1st  of  November.  The  artistic 
scheme  was  the  decoration  of  the  bays  of  the 

'  Another  MS.,  which  supplied  the  missing  passages,  turned  up  in 
1916. 


OXFORD  43 

Debating  Room  of  the  Union,  which  D.  G.  Rossetti 
had  persuaded  the  architect,  Benjamin  Wood- 
ward, to  entrust  to  himself  and  his  friends.  These 
included  Burne-Jones  and  William  Morris,  who 
formed  a  triple  alliance.  It  appears  to  have 
been  Hatch  who  introduced  Swinburne  to  Rossetti 
and  Burne-Jones  while  they  were  at  work  in  the 
Union. ^  The  result  was  so  happy  that  Burne- 
Jones  exclaimed,  "We  have  hitherto  been  three, 
and  now  there  are  four  of  us."  No  one  whom 
Swinburne  had  ever  met  seemed  to  him  so  won- 
derful as  Rossetti,  and  he  enjoyed  his  "cordial 
kindness  and  exuberant  generosity"  from  the 
first.  But  the  difference  in  their  ages,  and  a 
certain  magnificence  of  manner  on  the  part  of 
Rossetti,  kept  Swinburne  for  the  present  at  a 
respectful  but  increasingly  adoring  distance.  His 
real  intimacy  with  Rossetti  did  not  begin  until 
after  he  left  Oxford.  With  Morris,  to  whose 
conversation  Swinburne  owed  the  opening  of 
new  fields  of  intellectual  pleasure,  and  particu- 
larly an  introduction  to  the  romance  of  mediaeval 
France,  he  was  from  the  first  on  the  footing  of 
a  devoted  younger  brother.  He  told  Mr.  S.  C. 
Cockerell  that  when  Morris  read  to  him,  in  1857, 
his  just-written  "The  Haystack  in  the  Floods," 
the  poignancy  and  splendour  of  the  ending 
caused  him  an  anguish  which  was  more  than  his 
nerves  were  able  to  bear. 

He  was  more  at  his  ease  at  once  with  Dixon 
and  Burne-Jones,   although   he   was   not   invited 

^  This  incident  has  been  related  otherwise,  and  even  by  Mr.  W.  M. 
Rossetti ;  but  I  find  among  Swinburne's  MSS.  a  note  in  which  he  says 
(November  27,  1886),  "Rossetti  did  not  know  me  ' through  Burne-Jones ' ; 
I  was  introduced  to  them  both  at  the  same  time." 


44    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

to  take  part  in  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Review, 
in  which  they  fledged  their  fancies.  But  in 
December  1857,  when  the  periodical  called  Under- 
graduate Papers  was  started  into  brief  life  as  the 
organ  of  the  "Old  Mortality,"  under  the  Editor- 
ship of  Nichol,  Swinburne  was  a  contributor, 
together  with  Luke,  Birkbeck  Hill  and  Dicey. 
Swinburne's  "crudities,"  as  he  afterwards  called 
them,  were  four  in  number,  and  the  themes  of 
them  were  highly  characteristic.  They  included 
an  essay  on  Marlowe  and  Webster;  a  long  canto 
of  Pre-Raphaelite  triplets  called  Queen  Iseult;  a 
"boyish  bit  of  burlesque,"  being  a  mock- 
review  of  poems  of  a  supposed  Ernest  Wheldrake, 
a  "spasmodist,"  —  this  was  a  trick  which  he 
afterwards  repeated,  more  than  once  attempting 
in  1862  to  entrap  the  too  wary  editor  of  the 
Spectator ;  and  a  perfectly  amazing  blast  of  scorn 
(in  prose)  against  the  Emperor  of  the  French  and 
his  horde  of  servile  priests,  called  "Church 
Imperialism."  There  was  not  very  much  positive 
merit  or  even  promise  in  these  productions, 
which  were  only  remarkable,  as  the  work  of 
a  youth  of  nearly  twenty-one,  as  showing  the 
bent  of  his  mind  in  several  directions.  Queen 
Iseult,  Swinburne's  earliest  narrative  poem,  is 
notable  for  its  purity  of  diction,  for  the  effect 
on  it  of  W  illiam  Morris's  still  unpublished  verse, 
and  for  its  independence  of  all  the  recognised 
poetical  fashions  of  that  day,  when  Maud,  Men 
and  Women  and  Aurora  Leigh  were  the  poetical 
works  pre-eminently  before  the  public;  but  it 
has  no  inherent  value.  Undergraduate  Papers 
had    to    cease    with    its    third    number    (March- 


OXFORD  45 

April  1858),  because  the  Editor's  leisure  was 
absorbed  by  Degree  work,  but  he  boasted,  with 
an  honest  pride,  that  "we  paid  the  contributors 
at  the  usual  rate,-'  as  long  as  the  periodical 
lasted. 

Swinburne  had  not  found  his  true  voice  at 
the  end  of  1857.  He  found  it,  however,  in  the 
beginning  of  1858.  The  subject  given  for  the 
Newdigate  Prize  Poem  for  March  of  that  year 
was  "The  Discovery  of  the  North-West  Passage," 
and  Swinburne  competed.  He  was  not  known 
in  later  years  to  make  the  slightest  reference  to 
the  fact  that  he  had  entered  the  lists  on  this 
occasion  and  had  been  vanquished.  He  had 
every  reason  to  suppose  that  his  unlucky  New- 
digate had  disappeared,  but  his  father  had 
secreted  the  original  MS.  and  it  was  discovered 
at  the  death  of  Miss  Isabel  Swinburne.  Lord 
Bryce  recollects  that  the  Old  Mortality  were 
indignant  that  the  prize  was  awarded,  not  to 
Algernon,  but  to  a  Mr.  Francis  Law  Latham,  of 
Brazenose  College,  whose  name  has  never  been 
heard  of  since,  at  all  events  in  connection  with 
the  Muses.  It  seems  extraordinary  that  the 
examiners  should  not  have  perceived  the  merits 
of  Swinburne's  poem,  which  lift  it  far  above  the 
general  level  of  praiseworthy  prize-compositions, 
but  it  is  possible  that  a  pedantic  objection  was 
made  to  it.  The  subject  as  publicly  announced 
was  "The  Discovery  of  the  North-West  Passage," 
but  Swinburne  deals  exclusively  with  the  fate 
of  Franklin  and  his  companions.  That  the 
whole  expedition  was  lost  was  by  that  time 
universally  accepted,  although  it  was  not  until 


46  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

the  return  of  M'Clintock  in  October  1859  that 
full  particulars  of  Franklin's  death  were  made 
known. 

The  force  and  dignity  of  Swinburne's  verses 
on  this  theme  of  universal  public  discussion  are 
worthy  of  high  praise.  He  rose  to  the  level  of 
his  theme  in  a  poem  which  will  always  be  worthy 
of  a  place  in  his  collected  writings.  In  *'  The 
Death  of  Sir  John  Franklin "  there  is,  on  the 
me  hand,  an  absence  of  juvenile  affectation  and 
oddity,  and  on  the  other  the  presence  of  unusual 
purity  of  diction,  elevation  of  thought  and  melody 
of  versification.  Hardly  a  feeble  phrase  reveals 
the  undergraduate,  not  a  single  crudity  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite.  Here  was  discovered,  if  the  Oxford 
examiners  had  but  had  the  wit  to  perceive  it, 
a  new  element  in  English  poetry.  Nothing  in 
the  verse  of  the  age  had  prepared  them  for  such 
numbers  as  these : 

What  praise  shall  England  give  these  men  her  friends  ? 

For  while  the  bays  and  the  large  channels  flow 

In  the  broad  sea  between  the  iron  ends 

Of  the  pois'd  world  where  no  safe  sail  may  be, 

And  for  white  miles  the  hard  ice  never  blends 

With  the  chill  wasting  edges  of  dull  sea,  — 

And  while  to  praise  her  green  and  girdled  land 

Shall  be  the  same  as  to  praise  Liberty,  — 

So  long  the  record  of  these  men  shall  stand, 

Because  they  chose  not  life  but  rather  death. 

Each  side  being  weighed  with  a  most  equal  hand,  — 

Because  the  gift  they  had  of  English  breath 

They  did  give  back  to  England  for  her  sake, 

Like  those  dead  seamen  of  Elizabeth, 

And  those  that  wrought  with  Nelson  or  with  Blake, 

To  do  great  England  service  their  lives  long, — 

High  honour  shall  they  have. 


OXFORD  47 

The  Arctic  scenery,  to  which  Swinburne  never 
had  occasion  to  revert,  provides  some  striking 
passages : 

For  the  laborious  time  went  hard  with  these 
Among  the  thousand  colours  and  gaunt  shapes 
Of  the  strong  ice  cloven  with  breach  of  seas, 
Where  the  waste  sullen  shadow  of  steep  capes 
Narrows  across  the  cloudy-coloured  brine, 
And  by  strong  jets  the  anger'd  foam  escapes, 
And  a  sad  touch  of  sun  scores  the  sea-line 
Right  at  the  middle  motion  of  the  noon, 
And  then  fades  sharply  back,  and  the  cliffs  shine 
Fierce  with  keen  snows  against  a  kindled  moon. 
In  the  hard  purple  of  the  bitter  sky. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  rejection 
of  the  poem  on  which  he  had  expended  so  much 
enthusiastic  labour  was  an  element  in  the  repul- 
sion which  Swinburne  conceived  for  Oxford,  and 
for  the  languor  with  which  he  now  regarded  his 
further  career  in  the  University. 

In  the  course  of  the  summer  of  this  year  in 
Northumberland,  Algernon  was  much  observed. 
At  Wallington  were  then  living  the  geologist, 
Sir  Walter  C.  Trevelyan  (1797-1879)  and  his  wife, 
Pauline,  Lady  Trevelyan,  the  latter  a  friend  and 
patron  of  Rossetti,  and  a  great  admirer  of  Ruskin, 
who  frequently  stayed  at  Wallington.  As  neigh- 
bours of  the  Capheaton  household,  the  Trevelyans 
made  Algernon's  acquaintance,  and  he  became 
accustomed  more  and  more  often  to  tear  round 
to  Wallington  on  his  pony  that  he  might  pour  out 
his  confidences  to  Lady  Trevelyan.  Here  he 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Ruskin,  who  thought 
him  extremely  exhilarating,  and  of  William  Bell 
Scott,  then  a  middle-aged  drawing-master  work- 


48     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

ing  at  Newcastle,  who,  seeing  Swinburne  capering 
on  horseback,  drew  Ruskin's  attention  to  the 
marvellous  resemblance  he  bore  to  Uccello's 
portrait  of  Galeazzo  Malatesta,  with  his  aureole 
of  fiery  hair  and  his  pale  arrogant  face,  in  the 
"Battle  of  Sant'  Egidio"  picture  in  the  National 
Gallery. 

For  the  next  eight  years,  until  Lady  Trevelyan's 
death,  her  friendship  was  an  inestimable  benefit 
to  Algernon  Swinburne.  She  was  the  first  person 
outside  the  circle  of  his  own  family  who  took  the 
trouble  to  study  and  had  the  wit  to  appreciate 
him.  Sir  George  Otto  Trevelyan  (of  Wallington), 
who  is  the  son  of  the  first  cousin  of  Sir  Walter 
Trevelyan  (of  Nettlecombe)  and  the  present 
possessor  of  Wallington,  has  been  so  kind  as  to 
give  me  some  particulars  of  his  kinswoman.^ 
He  says:  "Pauline,  Lady  Trevelyan,  was  a 
woman  of  singular  and  unique  charm ;  quiet 
and  quaint  in  manner,  nobly  emotional,  in- 
grainedly  artistic,  very  wise  and  sensitive,  with 
an  everflowing  spring  of  the  most  delicious 
humour.  No  friend  of  hers,  man  or  woman, 
could  ever  have  enough  of  her  company;  and 
those  friends  were  many,  and  included  the  first 
people  of  the  day  in  every  province  of  distinction. 
She  was  Algernon  Swinburne's  good  angel ;  and 
he  regarded  her  with  'filial'  feelings.  It  was  a 
very  real  and  permanent  misfortune  for  him  that 
Pauline  Trevelyan  died  in  middle  life  in  the 
summer  of  1866 ;  and  sad  it  was  for  me  too,  since 
she  was  a  second  mother  to  me  who  was  so  rich 
in    that    blessing   already.     Widely,    and    almost 

^  Given  in  full  in  Appendix  II. 


OXFORD  49 

absurdly  different  as  we  two  young  men  were, 
Pauline  Trevelyan  was  catholic  enough  to  be 
in  sympathy  with  both  of  us." 

The  early  companionship  of  the  youthful  poet 
and  the  future  historian  ought,  it  may  be  said, 
to  have  been  rich  in  benefit  to  both.  But  un- 
fortunately Algernon  Swinburne  and  George  Otto 
Trevelyan  had  not  a  taste,  not  a  pursuit,  in 
common.  The  books  and  the  men  that  Swin- 
burne loved  and  admired  are  such  as  have  been 
already  mentioned  in  these  pages ;  Trevelyan, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  *' never  tired  of  reading 
and  talking  about  Thackeray  and  Tristram 
Shandy^  and  Albert  Smith's  and  Theodore  Hook's 
novels,  to  all  of  which  the  poet  was  indifferent. 
The  same  difference  divided  them  in  the  classic 
literature  which  they  both  loved  as  enthusiastic 
undergraduates.  Swinburne  was  entirely  devoted 
to  yEschylus  and  Catullus ;  Trevelyan  with  an 
equal  exclusiveness  to  Aristophanes  and  Juvenal. 
*'No  author  existed  for  me,"  Sir  George  O. 
Trevelyan  writes  me,  *'who  was  not  a  favourite 
with  Macaulay,  and  though  that  gave  me  a 
large  field  of  choice,  it  must  be  allowed  that 
Macaulay's  reading  did  not  lie  along  the  same 
lines  as  that  of  Gabriel  Rossetti's  circle.  More- 
over, I  was  always  eager  to  be  after  the  black- 
cock and  partridges,  although  I  shot  much  less 
well  than  Algernon  Swinburne  wrote  poetry. 
There  was  no  liking  or  disliking  between  us ; 
but  the  plain  fact  is  that  we  were  not  to  each 
other's  purpose."  The  two  lads,  although  the 
one  spent  his  long  vacations  from  Oxford  at 
Capheaton,   and   the  other  his  from   Cambridge 


50  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

two  miles  off  at  Wallington,  never  walked  or 
conversed  together,  and  Trevelyan,  being  fifteen 
months  junior,  regarded  the  extraordinary  lad 
who  could  write  French  ballades,  and  who 
seemed  to  know  all  about  King  Arthur's  court, 
*'with  awe  and  some  apprehension."  It  would 
be  an  error,  however,  to  suppose  that  if  Swin- 
burne did  not  happen  to  shoot  partridges,  he 
was  inert  or  lackadaisical.  On  the  contrary, 
at  this  time,  and  for  the  next  two  or  three  years, 
Swinburne's  activity  and  hardihood,  in  riding 
and  swimming  and  climbing,  were  the  wonder 
and  the  alarm  of  those  who  were  responsible  for 
his  well-being,  and  it  was  a  very  anxious  business 
to  be  in  charge  of  Master  Algernon.  *'That  lad 
is  a  flame  of  fire,"  one  of  his  grandfather's  visitors 
exclaimed  as  he  flashed,  hatless,  past  the  windows. 
In  some  verses,  apparently  addressed  to  W.  B. 
Scott,  written  twenty  years  afterwards,  but  hither- 
to only  circulated  privately,  Swinburne  describes 
his  sensations  in  Northumberland  at  this  time : 

Whenever  in  August  holiday  times 

I  rode  or  swam  through  a  rapture  of  rhymes, 

Over  heather  or  crag,  and  by  scaur  and  by  stream. 

Clothed  with  delight  by  the  might  of  a  dream. 

With  the  sweet  sharp  wind  blown  hard  through  my  hair, 

On  eyes  enkindled  and  head  made  bare ;  .  .  . 

Or  loosened  a  song  to  seal  for  me 

A  kiss  on  the  clamorous  mouth  of  the  sea. 

Ruskin  had  been  so  much  struck  with  the 
young  poet  that  when  he  next  visited  Oxford, 
and  stayed  with  his  and  Sir  Walter  Trevelyan's 
intimate  friend.  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir)  Henry  Acland, 
Swinburne  was  asked  to  the  house.     But  prob- 


OXFORD  51 

ably  this  was  not  his  earliest  introduction  to  the 
active  and  enlightened  doctor,  who  was  then 
reader  in  anatomy  at  Christ  Church  and  Radcliffe 
Librarian,  for  Acland  was  already  interested  in 
the  Pre-Raphaelites,  and  particularly  in  Morris 
and  Burne- Jones.  He  was  just  about  this  time 
appointed  regius  professor  of  medicine,  and  he 
was  full  of  philanthropic  activities  and  stirring 
projects.  He  was  very  hospitable,  and  Swinburne 
used  to  describe  his  house  as  full  of  bores,  who 
stood  about  in  groups  and  made  fatuously 
aesthetic  remarks.  Acland,  who  was  the  soul  of 
urbanity,  was  never  conscious  of  the  short- 
comings of  his  hospitality.  But  there  was  a 
kind  of  solemnity  about  him  that  made  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites,  and  particularly  Swinburne,  forget 
their  manners.  Burne- Jones  wickedly  said  that 
*'Acland's  pulse  was  only  really  quickened  when 
osteologists  were  by,  who  compared  their  bones 
with  his  till  the  conversation  rattled." 

Swinburne  was  particularly  annoyed  because 
Acland,  in  his  boundless  sympathy,  wished  to  share 
*'the  orgies  and  dare-devilries"  of  their  little  group, 
and  on  one  occasion  they  all  fled  to  London  for 
the  night,  to  avoid  having  tea  in  a  meadow  with 
Acland  and  his  children.  They  behaved  very 
badly,  and  like  shy  and  naughty  little  boys,  to 
excellent  Dr.  Acland,  whom  they  privately  called, 
I  do  not  know  why,  "the  Rose  of  Brazil";  but 
the  biographer  has  to  admit,  with  a  blush,  that 
Swinburne  behaved  the  worst  of  all.  On  one 
occasion,  when  Dr.  Acland  was  so  kind  as  to  read 
aloud  a  paper  on  sewage,  there  was  a  scene  over 
which  the  Muse  of  History  must  draw  a  veil. 


52     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

In  August  1857  Swinburne  went  to  Glasgow 
to  visit  Nichol  in  his  home,  and  the  two  friends 
presently  started  for  a  trip  to  Skye  and  the  central 
Hebrides.  They  climbed  the  peak  of  Blaaven 
with  success,  and  "with  no  great  danger."  The 
weather  was  glorious,  and  Swinburne,  who  was 
in  towering  spirits,  "desecrated  and  insulted" 
the  islands  with  vain  puns,  saying,  "We  ran  a 
Muck  once  or  twice,  and  were  like  to  have  made 
a  Mull  of  the  affair,  but  on  the  w^hole  it  was  a 
Rum  go!"  To  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  apt 
to  shock  the  dignity  of  the  solemn  by  such  play- 
fulness, which,  in  the  midst  of  the  general  in- 
tensity of  his  demeanour,  gave  a  very  human 
relief  to  his  conversation.  Nichol  returned  the 
visit  by  staying  with  the  Swinburnes  in  the  Isle 
of  Wight  the  follow^ing  Christmas,  and  it  was  at 
this  time  that  Swinburne  called,  "with  a  college 
friend  of  his"  (doubtless  Nichol),  on  Tennyson 
at  Farringford,  who  asked  him  to  dinner,  and 
"thought  him  a  very  modest  and  intelligent 
young  fellow."  Tennyson  read  Maud  to  him, 
and  appreciated  the  delicacy  Swinburne  showed 
in  that  "he  did  not  press  upon  me  any  verses  of 
his  own."  In  later  years,  Swinburne  mentioned 
that,  on  this  occasion,  Tennyson  "expressed  a 
special  devotion  for  Virgil." 

A  certain  impression  was  made  on  the  young 
poet  by  his  attending  the  lectures  of  Matthew 
Arnold,  who  was  appointed  Professor  of  Poetry  at 
Oxford  in  1857.  But  these  lectures  had  the  effect 
at  first  of  disappointing  the  ardent  lover  of  Victor 
Hugo  and  Landor,  who  found  their  moderation 
cold.     This    impression    was    heightened    by    the 


OXFORD  53 

issue  of  Merope,  which,  indeed,  the  truest  admirers 
of  Arnold  have  agreed  to  regard  as  a  failure. 
Swinburne  admitted  afterwards  that  the  perfec- 
tion of  Arnold's  prose  was  not  acceptable  to  him 
at  first,  but  he  had  already  cultivated  a  passion 
for  his  lyrical  poetry.  With  his  astounding 
faculty  for  acquiring  the  best  at  the  earliest 
moment,  Swinburne  had  secured  a  copy  of 
Empedocles  on  Etna  while  he  was  still  at  Eton. 
*' Early  as  this  was"  (1852),  "it  was  not  my  first 
knowledge  of  the  poet;  the  'Reveller,'  the 
*  Merman,'  'The  New  Sirens,'  I  had  mainly  by 
heart  in  a  time  of  childhood  just  ignorant  of 
teens,"  that  is  to  say,  in  1849,  the  year  of  their 
publication.  The  effect  of  this  boyish  enthusiasm 
was  partly  weakened,  when  Swinburne  began  to 
attend  Arnold's  lectures  in  1857,  by  the  preju- 
dice of  Nichol,  who,  full  of  ardour  for  Carlyle, 
deprecated  the  Hellenism  of  Arnold,  and  who  is 
doubtless  the  "profane  alien"  who  scandalised 
Swinburne  by  defining  the  author  of  Empedocles 
as  "David  the  son  of  Goliath."  Swinburne's 
mature  regard  for  Matthew  Arnold  should  be 
studied  in  the  very  elaborate  and  generous 
monograph  he  published  ten  years  later.  In  this 
he  touches  the  various  qualities  of  Arnold's  style 
in  prose  and  verse  with  extraordinary  fulness.^ 
At  the  beginning  of  his  third  year  at  Oxford, 

*  All  the  contributions  to  Undergraduate  Papers  were  unsigned. 
In  1883  Swinburne  confessed  to  four  of  these,  which  have  been  men- 
tioned above,  but  Nichol  state^]  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Wise  (December  23 
of  that  year)  that  they  were  ii\e  in  number.  The  fifth,  which  Swin- 
burne never  acknowledged,  is  st-ted  in  Professor  Knight's  Memoir  of 
John  Nichol  to  have  been  "".fodein  Hellenism,"  in  the  course  of  which 
the  writer  speaks  with  ironic  displeasure  of  some  remarks  he  had  just 
heard  Matthew  Arnold  make,  in  a  lecture,  about  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  as 
a  historian. 


54     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

under  the  stimulus  of  Jowett's  conversation, 
Swinburne  paid  a  closer  attention  to  his  studies 
than  he  had  hitherto  vouchsafed,  and  he  took 
a  second  in  moderations.  In  the  course  of  this 
year,  too,  he  won  the  Taylorian  scholarship  for 
French  and  Italian.  With  Italy  and  France, 
indeed,  his  thoughts  were  now  occupied,  even  to 
excess.  In  January  the  fanatical  Carbonaro, 
Orsini,  attempted  to  assassinate  Napoleon  III., 
of  whose  character  and  person  Swinburne  had 
formed  a  violent  hatred.  The  crime  supplied 
the  poet  with  a  new  hero,  and  having  procured 
a  portrait  of  Orsini,  he  hung  it  up  in  his  sitting- 
room,  opposite  that  of  Mazzini,  and  pirouetted 
in  front  of  it  in  ecstasies  of  enthusiasm.  In^the 
midst  of  a  republican  fervour  which  was  nourished 
upon  Les  Chdtiments  of  Victor  Hugo  —  with  its 
invectives  against  *'le  singe,"  "le  vautour," 
*'rassassin"  —  the  young  English  poet  was 
summoned  to  accompany  his  parents  to  Paris 
in  the  Easter  vacation  of  1858.  It  was  his  earliest 
experience  of  France.  He  gave  them  a  solemn 
promise  that  he  would  do  nothing  while  in  Paris 
to  undermine  the  authority  of  Napoleon  III.,  and 
this  grave  undertaking  so  much  amused  Lady 
Trevelyan  that  she  painted  a  water-colour  draw- 
ing of  Algernon,  stripped  to  the  waist,  his  red 
hair  flying  out  like  the  tail  of  a  comet,  with  a 
blunderbuss  in  either  hand,  striding  across  the 
top  of  a  Parisian  barricade. 

Swinburne  once  described  to  me  an  incident 
of  this  visit  to  Paris,  too  characteristic  not  to  be 
preserved.  He  handsomely  kept  his  word  not 
to  endanger  the  Empire  by  any  overt  act,  but 


OXFORD  55 

his  republican  spirit  boiled  within  him.  One 
afternoon,  driving  in  an  open  carriage  in  the 
Champs  Elysees,  Algernon  being  on  the  box 
beside  the  driver,  the  party  met  "the  Accursed" 
in  his  imperial  person.  Admiral  and  Lady  Jane 
Swinburne  stood  up  and  bowed  to  the  Emperor, 
who,  very  politely,  raised  his  hat  in  response. 
*'And  did  you  take  off  your  hat  to  him.f^"  I 
asked.  "Not  wishing,"  the  poet  answered  slowly 
in  an  ecstasy  of  ironic  emphasis,  —  "Not  wishing 
to  be  obliged  to  cut  my  hand  off  at  the  wrist  the 
moment  I  returned  to  the  hotel,  I  —  did  —  not!^' 
On  his  reappearance  at  Balliol,  Swinburne's  rites 
of  incantation  before  the  portraits  of  Mazzini  and 
Orsini  became  more  extravagant  than  ever.  In 
these  performances  he  was  humorously  sup- 
ported by  the  sympathy  of  T.  H.  Green,  but 
other  fellow-undergraduates  regarded  them  as 
silly  and  almost  blasphemous.  Nichol,  however, 
was  interested  in  them,  and  drew  Jowett's  atten- 
tion to  the  unparalleled  phenomenon  of  a  young 
person  at  Oxford  who  followed  with  passionate 
excitement  and  close  personal  study  the  great 
events  of  the  Italy  of  that  day.  Oddly  enough 
Jowett  was  rather  an  admirer  of  Napoleon  III. 

Swinburne  was  drawn  aside  from  the  obsession 
of  republicanism  by  his  interest  in  the  new  and 
wonderful  world  of  art  which  his  Pre-Raphaelite 
friends  opened  out  before  him.  Early  in  1858 
he  was  profoundly  moved  by  studying  the  old 
French  Violier  des  Histoires  Romaines,  which  he 
immediately  began  to  imitate.  The  publication  of 
William  Morris's  Defence  of  Guenevere  filled  him 
with  emulation   and  respect.     "Reading  it,"   he 


56  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

wrote,  "I  would  fain  be  worthy  to  sit  down  at 
his  feet."  On  the  other  hand,  Morris,  with  great 
affabiUty,  had  consented  to  read  in  manuscript, 
and  to  commend,  a  drama  of  Rosamond,  wliich 
Swinburne  had  now  completed.  How  far  this 
play,  which  we  know  was  burned  and  then  re- 
written, corresponded  with  the  Rosamond  after- 
wards published,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  *'But  I 
suspect  I  must  be  Eglamor,  to  Morris  as  Sordello," 
Swinburne  modestly  admitted.  A  quotation  from 
a  letter  of  this  time  deals  with  the  great  poem  of 
Browning,  which  Nichol,  who  was  still  almost  the 
only  Browningite  in  Oxford,  had  no  doubt  recom- 
mended to  him.  Swinburne  from  Oxford  writes 
to  Hatch,  who  had  now  become  a  curate  in  a 
parish  in  the  East  End  of  London : 

I  long  to  be  with  you  by  firelight  between  the  sunset 
and  the  sea  to  have  talk  of  Sordello;  it  is  one  of  my  canonical 
scriptures.  Does  he  sleep  and  forget?  I  think  yes.  Did 
the  first  time  Palma's  mouth  trembled  to  touch  his  in  the 
golden  rose-lands  of  Paradise,  a  sudden  power  of  angelic 
action  come  over  him.'*  I  suspect,  not  utterly  companion- 
less.  Sometimes  one  knows  —  not  now  :  but  I  suppose  he 
slept  years  off  before  she  kissed  him.  In  Heaven  she  grew 
too  tired  and  thin  to  sing  well,  and  her  face  grew  whiter 
than  its  aureole  with  pain  and  want  of  him.  And  if,  like 
the  other  Saint,  she  wept,  the  tears  fell  upon  his  shut 
lids  and  fretted  the  eyes  apart  as  they  trickled.  Who 
knows  these  matters?  Only  we  keep  the  honey-stain  of 
hair.     I  write  more  folly  to  you  than  I  dare  read  over. 

He  was  now  full  of  schemes  of  his  own.  He 
composed  a  dramatic  lyric  called  "The  Golden 
House,"  which  seems  to  have  disappeared.  He 
planned  an  epic  poem  on  the  Albigenses,  but  was 


OXFORD  57 

conscious  of  insufficient  knowledge:  "I  must 
read  more,  and  then  dash  at  it  in  wrath."  Again 
he  had  before  him  the  subject  of  Tristram  and 
Iseult,  who  were  to  be.  the  Hfe-long  companions 
of  his  imagination:  "I  will  send  you  specimens 
of  a  new  poem  on  Tristram  which  I  am  about," 
he  writes.  In  a  half -ironic,  half -defiant  mood  he 
confesses  to  *'an  abortive  covetousness  of  imita- 
tion in  which  an  exaggeration  of  the  faults  of  my 
models,"  mainly  Shelley,  Browning,  and  Morris, 
*'is  happily  neutralized  by  my  own  imbecility." 

Under  the  pressure  of  Nichol,  Swinburne 
presently  passed  through  a  period  of  looking  to 
Carlyle  as  to  an  inspired  teacher  and  guide,  but 
Jowett,  who  was  now  seeing  more  and  more  of 
him,  warned  the  young  man  against  the  influence 
of  that  writer.  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that 
for  very  many  years  the  fascination  and  repulsion 
which  Carlyle  exercised  over  Swinburne  continued 
to  pulsate ;  he  could  never  comfortably  make  up 
his  mind  whether  to  accept  or  to  repudiate  Carlyle, 
whom,  however,  in  the  main  he  decidedly  re- 
pudiated. Jowett  had  now  extended  over  Swin- 
burne that  segis  of  interest  and  sympathy  with 
which  he  overshadowed  intelligent  young  men, 
not  at  Balliol  only,  but  at  other  colleges.  He  is 
said  to  have  been  puzzled  by  something  illogical 
and  almost  incoherent  in  Swinburne's  houtades, 
which  yet  amused  him  very  much.  The  story 
goes  that  Jowett  set  an  essay  on  the  school  of 
Eleatic  Philosophers  for  his  weekly  class  of 
undergraduates.  Swinburne  was  asked  to  read 
his  composition  aloud,  while  Jowett  sat  before 
the  fire,  breaking  the  coal  with  a  small  poker. 


58     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

The  essay  was  a  torrent  of  words,  read  very 
rapidly  and  shrilly.  When  the  poet  had  finished, 
Jowett  said,  after  a  long  silence,  "Mr.  Swinburne, 
I  do  not  see  that  you  have  been  pursuing  any 
particular  line  of  thought." 

Swinburne  kept  terms  regularly  through  the 
years  1856,  1857,  and  1858,  but  after  that  a  change 
came  over  his  temper.  The  restraining  influence 
of  his  older  friends  was  removed,  for  Rossetti, 
Burne-Jones,  and  Morris  had  returned  to  London, 
Nichol  had  departed  for  Scotland  at  Christmas, 
while  Hatch,  Spencer  Stanhope,  and  others  had 
taken  their  degrees  and  left  the  University. 
Swinburne's  conduct  became  turbulent  and  un- 
seemly; he  was  looked  upon  as  "dangerous'* 
by  the  college  authorities,  and  Jowett  expressed 
a  fear  that  he  might  be  sent  down  for  some  ex- 
travagance, "Balliol  thereby  making  itself  as 
ridiculous  as  University  had  made  itself  about 
Shelley."  It  was  now  that  Lord  Sheflfield  heard 
Swinburne  speak  at  the  Union,  "reading  excitedly 
but  ineffectively  a  long  tirade  against  Napoleon, 
and  in  favour  of  Mazzini."  This  "ingenuous 
confession  of  wrong-headed  boyish  perversity,'* 
as  it  was  universally  regarded,  "was  received 
with  a  general  kindly  smile  of  amusement"  by 
an  assembly  which  contained,  so  at  least  it 
appeared  to  the  orator,  "grave  and  reverend 
seniors"  as  well  as  undergraduates  not  much 
older  than  himself.  Swinburne  followed  with 
frantic  interest  the  movements  of  Italy  and 
Austria,  and  was  hardly  able  to  sustain  the 
emotion  produced  in  him  by  the  declaration  of 
war,  and  by  the  successive  battles  of  Magenta 


OXFORD  59 

and  Solferino.  He  kept  the  first  two  terms  of 
1859,  but  he  did  not  reside  at  all  during  the 
second  half  of  the  summer  term,  in  consequence 
of  Jowett's  growing  anxiety  about  his  behaviour, 
which  became  more  and  more  unruly. 

Not  much  scandal  seems  to  have  been  caused 
by  Swinburne's  extravagances,  except  within 
Balliol  College,  where  they  were  the  cause  of  much 
annoyance  to  the  authorities.  But,  so  far  as  his 
friends  in  other  colleges  knew,  his  only  offences 
consisted  in  a  defiant  neglect  of  morning  chapel 
and  in  a  determined  disobedience  of  regulations. 
Lord  Bryce  writes  to  me  : 

I  remember  how  once  —  I  think  in  1859  —  he  had  been 
gated  by  the  Dean,  old  Mr.  Woolcombe,  for  non-attend- 
ance, repeated  after  many  admonitions,  at  chapel,  and 
how  consequently  he  could  not  accompany  us  on  the 
annual  excursion  which  the  Old  Mortality  used  to  make 
to  some  place  of  interest  or  beauty  within  reach  of 
Oxford.  When  we  returned  in  the  evening  [from 
Edgehill],  some  one  said,  "Let  us  condole  with  poor 
Swinburne,"  and  so  we  went  to  his  rooms  to  cheer  him  up. 
He  launched  into  a  wonderful  display  of  vituperative 
eloquence.  He  was  not  really  angry,  but  he  enjoyed  the 
opportunity,  and  the  resources  of  his  imagination  in  meta- 
phor and  the  amazing  richness  of  his  vocabulary  had  never, 
I  think,  struck  us  so  much  before. 

This  richness  of  invective  was  the  wonder 
and  envy  of  his  youthful  friends.  William 
Morris  used  to  describe  scenes  of  Homeric 
splendour.  Swinburne  was  under  the  impression 
that  there  was  only  two  fares  for  cabmen,  a  shilling 
for  a  short  drive  and  eighteenpence  for  a  long 
one.  On  one  occasion,  a  cabman  who  considered 
himself   underpaid   began   to   abuse   Morris    and 


60  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Swinburne,  when  the  latter  instantly  replied 
with  such  a  torrent  of  vituperation  that  the 
cabman  drove  off  at  full  speed. 

Lord  Bryce's  observation,  "he  was  not  really 
angry,"  throws  a  valuable  light  on  many  of  his 
later  escapades  in  controversy.  He  was  not  really 
angry  with  Furnivall  and  Emerson  and  the  rest, 
but  he  enjoyed  the  opportunity  to  blaze  in  invec- 
tive. At  Oxford  it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  his 
contemporaries  of  the  Old  Mortality  alone,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  Jowett,  understood  him. 
To  the  other  dons  and  undergraduates  he  seemed 
half-mad  and  a  little  dangerous.  His  intimate 
friends  recognised  that  he  was  an  extraordinary 
being,  referable  to  no  category.  With  all  his 
excitability  and  extravagance  of  language,  and 
his  general  irresponsibility,  he  had  admirable 
manners  and  plenty,  not  only  of  savoir  faire, 
but  of  shrewdness  in  his  judgments  of  others. 

But  he  was  all  out  of  tune  with  college  dis- 
cipline, and  after  consultation  with  the  Admiral, 
Jowett  determined  that  it  would  be  best  that 
Algernon  should  leave  Oxford  for  a  season,  soon 
after  entering  his  twenty-third  year.  He  found 
an  excuse  for  sending  him  to  read  modern  his- 
tory with  William  Stubbs,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Oxford,  but  then  known  as  a  learned  young 
clergyman  who  had  taken  a  country  living  that 
he  might  devote  himself  to  the  study  of  ecclesi- 
astical registers.  His  parish  was  the  strictly 
agricultural  one  of  Navestock,  near  Romford  in 
Essex,  where  he  had  quite  recently  married  the 
mistress  of  the  village  school.  To  this  amiable 
couple  the  republican  was  duly  sent  as  a  private 


OXFORD  61 

pupil.  Swinburne,  a  little  in  disgrace,  but  abso- 
lutely imperturbable,  arrived  at  Navestock  on  a 
summer  Saturday  evening,  and  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Stubbs,  on  the  supposition  that  he  must  be  tired, 
kindly  suggested  that  he  should  have  his  sleep 
out,  and  be  excused  from  attending  morning 
service  in  the  parish  church.  The  poet's  break- 
fast was  served  in  his  bedroom,  but  when  the 
Vicar  started  for  church  Swinburne  perceived 
that  it  was  a  glorious  day,  and  reflected  that  it 
was  a  pity  not  to  be  out-of-doors.  The  vicarage 
of  Navestock  stands  close  to  the  churchyard,  and 
to  approach  the  church  from  the  village  every 
one  must  pass  the  gate  of  the  vicarage  garden. 
Swinburne,  who  had  a  preference  for  strong 
colours,  slipped  his  feet  into  a  pair  of  scarlet 
slippers,  arrayed  himself  in  a  crimson  dressing- 
gown,  and  sauntered  out  into  the  garden.  The 
bell  now  summoned  the  parish  to  its  devotions, 
and  it  occurred  to  Swinburne  that  it  would  be 
interesting  to  see  what  sort  of  people  went  to 
church  in  Essex  on  Sunday  mornings. 

So,  with  the  sun  lighting  up  his  great  head  of 
hair  like  a  burning  bush,  with  his  robe  all  crimson 
to  the  ankles,  and  his  vermilion  shoes  on  his  feet, 
he  leaned  pensively  over  the  gate.  The  earliest 
worshippers  began  to  come  along  the  lane,  but 
one  and  all  stopped  at  a  respectful  distance,  nor 
dared  to  pass  the  flaming  apparition.  Swinburne 
grew  more  and  more  interested  in  the  silent, 
swelling  crowd  that  now  began  to  block  the  lane. 
Meanwhile  there  was  an  ecclesiastical  deadlock; 
not  a  worshipper  appeared  in  church,  until 
Stubbs,  at  a  loss  to  account  for  the  absence  of 


62  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

his  parishioners,  bade  the  clerk  to  ring  again. 
Still  no  parishioners !  But  at  last  the  boldest 
man  in  Navestock,  fixing  his  eyes  on  the  poet 
and  hugging  the  further  hedge,  made  a  bolt  past 
for  the  churchyard,  and  the  entire  congregation 
followed  him  in  a  rush.  Swinburne  reflected 
*'how  oddly  the  Essex  yokel  takes  his  Sunday 
service,"  and  then  strolled  back  to  the  vicarage 
to  dress  for  luncheon.  This  was  his  version  of 
the  incident,  which  Stubbs  on  his  part  was  wont 
to  tell  in  more  or  less  similar  terms. 

Another  story  of  the  Navestock  episode  used 
to  be  recounted  by  Stubbs.  Finding  Swinburne 
to  be  passionately  devoted  to  the  poets  and 
remarkably  learned  in  their  works,  his  host  and 
hostess  inquired  whether  he  did  not  write  poetry 
himself.  It  appeared  that  he  did,  and  being 
pressed  to  produce  a  specimen  of  it,  he  dragged 
out  of  his  box  a  large  historical  tragedy  in  blank 
verse.  What  this  was  does  not  seem  to  be 
remembered,  but  we  may  conjecture  that  it  was 
the  original  draft  of  Rosamond.  Early  in  the 
evening  Swinburne  began  to  read,  and  he  read 
the  play  right  through.  Stubbs  was  very  much 
impressed  with  the  merits  of  the  piece,  but  also 
with  its  faults,  and  he  felt  obliged  to  say  that  he 
thought  the  tone  of  the  amatory  passages  some- 
what objectionable.  He  had  anticipated  a  little 
scene  of  modest  confusion,  which  he  would  have 
removed  by  praise,  but  what  he  was  not  prepared 
for  was  a  long  silent  stare,  followed  by  a  scream 
which  rent  the  vicarage,  and  by  the  bolt  upstairs 
of  the  outraged  poet,  hugging  his  MS.  to  his 
bosom.     Presently  gentle  Mrs.  Stubbs  stole  up- 


OXFORD  63 

stairs,  and  tapping  at  Swinburne's  door,  entreated 
him  to  come  down  to  supper.  There  was  no 
reply,  but  an  extraordinary  noise  within  of 
tearing  and  a  strange  glare  through  the  key-hole. 
All  night,  at  intervals,  there  were  noises  in  the 
poet's  room,  and  the  Stubbses  were  distracted. 
In  the  morning  Swinburne  appeared  extremely 
late,  and  deathly  pale.  Stubbs,  by  this  time 
very  wretched,  hastened  to  say  how  sorry  he  was 
that  he  had  so  hastily  condemned  the  drama,  and 
how  much  he  hoped  that  Swinburne  had  not  been 
discouraged  by  his  criticism.  The  poet  replied, 
*'I  lighted  a  fire  in  the  empty  grate,  and  I  burned 
every  page  of  my  manuscript."  Stubbs  was 
horrified.  "But  it  does  not  matter;  I  sat  up 
all  night  and  wrote  it  right  through  again  from 
memory." 

The  stay  at  Navestock  was  a  very  pleasant 
episode,  and  Swinburne  never  ceased  to  refer  to 
it  with  pleasure.  Stubbs,  who  was  not  only  a 
very  kindly  but  a  really  witty  man,  always  spoke 
in  a  friendly  way  of  Swinburne,  and  enjoyed 
being  chaffed  about  his  pupil.  But  the  visit 
came  to  an  end,  and  when,  on  the  14th  of  October, 
Swinburne  had  to  reappear  in  Oxford,  he  proved 
to  be  as  unfitted  for  university  life  as  ever. 
Instead  of  attending  to  his  work,  he  occupied 
himself,  in  his  lodgings  in  Broad  Street,  with 
writing  a  three-act  comedy  in  the  manner  of 
Fletcher,  called  Laugh  and  Lie  Down;  this, 
perhaps  happily,  is  lost.  His  landlady,  whose 
previous  tenant  had  been  Nichol,  made  complaints 
to  the  authorities  about  Swinburne's  late  hours 
and  general  irregularities,  and  afterwards  laid  it 


64     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

down  as  a  rule  that  she  would  never  take  another 
lodger  from  Balliol  College.  "I've  had  me  fill 
of  them  tiresome  Balliol  gentlemen,"  she  severely 
said.  Jowett  gave  the  matter  up  in  despair,  and 
on  the  21st  of  November  1859,  Swinburne  left 
Oxford  for  good,  never  taking  a  degree.  Nothing 
can  be  added  to  his  own  frank  statement,  made 
nearly  forty  years  later,  "My  Oxonian  career 
culminated  in  total  and  scandalous  failure."  ^ 

^  The  quarrel  with  Oxford  was  never  healed,  but  when  Lord  Curzon 
of  Kedleston  was  appointed  Chancellor  of  the  University,  one  of  his  earliest 
acts  was  to  offer  an  honorary  degree  to  the  poet.  I  am  allowed  to  print 
the  reply : 

May  3,  1907. 

Dear  Lord  Curzon  —  I  am  much  honoured  and  gratified  by  the  far 
too  complimentary  terms  in  which  you  offer  me  a  distinction  which  I  must 
decline  to  accept.  But  I  am  not  the  less  sensible  of  your  courtesy,  or  the 
less  hopeful  that  you  will  not  regard  me  as  ungrateful  for  it.  —  I  am,  yours 
very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBUHNE. 


CHAPTER  III 

EARLY   LIFE    IN    LONDON 
(1859-1865) 

When  he  left  Oxford,^  Algernon  went  up  to 
Northumberland,  where  his  grandfather  had  now 
entered  the  ninety-eighth  year  of  his  life.  From 
Capheaton  he  made  negotiations  with  his  father, 
who,  deeply  incensed  by  his  son's  failure  at  the 
University,  continued  to  inquire  what  Algernon* 
meant  to  do.  The  young  man  declined  to  live 
any  longer  at  home,  but  preferred  his  liberty  in 
London,  with  the  power  to  devote  himself  to 
literature.  Lady  Jane  was  on  his  side,  and 
Admiral  Swinburne  ultimately  withdrew  his  op- 
position. After  a  long  delay,  in  the  course  of 
1860,  an  allowance,  small  at  first,  but  ultimately 

^  Swinburne's  name  continued  to  head  the  list  of  undergraduates  at 
Balliol  for  nearly  twenty  years  after  he  left  Oxford.  My  friend,  the 
late  Master  of  the  College,  who  kindly  verified  the  fact  for  me,  told 
me  that  in  February  1878  the  poet  removed  his  name.  Up  to  this 
date  he  had  regularly  renewed  his  Caution  money  every  year,  and  he 
did  this  as  a  protest  against  the  action  of  the  authorities.  If  he  had 
not  done  so,  his  name  would  have  disappeared  from  the  Calendar,  but 
if  the  dues  are  paid  up,  the  University  cannot  prevent  the  name  from 
appearing.  As  the  Master  informed  me,  "The  College  pays  the  dues 
annually  out  of  the  Caution  until  this  comes  to  an  end,  and  after  the 
'cupboard  is  bare'  the  name  disappears  mechanically."  Swinburne's 
persistence  in  forcing  his  name  on  to  the  Calendar  is  an  interesting  proof 
of  his  annoyance. 

F  65 


m     ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

(I  believe)  of  £400  a  year  from  his  parents  having 
been  offered  and  accepted,  Algernon  arrived  in 
London,  where  his  only  acquaintances  seem  to 
have  been  the  painters  whom  he  had  met  at  the 
Oxford  Union  three  years  before.  Of  these  the 
one  he  found  first  was  Edward  Burne-Jones,  but 
presently  William  Morris  came  back  from  France, 
the  Madox  Browns  were  settled  in  Fortes  Terrace, 
and  Rossetti,  fresh  from  Paris,  returned  to 
Chatham  Place.  These  last  three  men  had  lately 
married,  and  their  modest  households  were  open 
to  the  young  poet.  In  June  1860  Burne-Jones 
also  married,  and  from  the  very  first  Algernon 
was  made  at  home  in  his  house.  The  charming 
recollections  of  Lady  Burne-Jones  form  almost 
the  only  London  record  of  Swinburne's  life  at 
this  time.  After  the  summer  of  this  year,  he 
was  a  frequent  and  always  a  welcome  visitor  to 
the  William  Morrises  at  the  Red  House,  in  Essex, 
where  Miss  May  Morris  tells  me  that  she  just 
remembers  him,  lying  on  the  grass  in  the  orchard, 
with  his  red  hair  spread  abroad,  while  her  baby 
sister  and  she  scattered  rose-leaves  over  his 
laughing  face. 

He  took  rooms  at  16  Grafton  Street,  Fitzroy 
Square,  to  be  near  the  British  Museum.  The 
Burne-Joneses  lived  close  by,  in  Russell  Place. 
Swinburne  would  come  in  two  or  three  times  in  a 
day,  "bringing  his  poems  hot  from  his  heart," 
as  Lady  Burne-Jones  puts  it.  He  was  restless 
beyond  words,  hopping  about  the  room  un- 
ceasingly, "seeming  to  keep  time,  by  a  swift 
movement  of  the  hands  at  the  wrists,  and  some- 
times of  the  feet  also,  with  some  inner  rhythm 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  67 

of  excitement."  At  that  date,  being  twenty- 
three  years  of  age,  but  looking  much  younger, 
he  was  a  miracle  of  strange  freshness  and  fascina- 
tion. "When  repeating  poetry  he  had  a  perfectly 
natural  way  of  lifting  his  indescribably  fine  eyes 
in  a  rapt  unconscious  gaze,  and  their  clear  green 
colour  softened  by  thick  brown  eyelashes  was 
unforgettable."  Already  the  profusion  and  mag- 
nificence of  his  talk  were  the  wonder  of  those  who 
listened  to  him.  He  saw,  however,  but  very  few 
people,  studying  and  writing,  generally  alone, 
with  feverish  assiduity. 

In  the  course  of  1860  his  parents  took  him 
abroad  with  his  brother  and  sisters,  to  Mentone, 
where  Admiral  Swinburne  had  rented  a  villa, 
the  Maison  Laurenti,  for  the  winter.  Algernon 
so  violently  detested  this  place  that  it  became  a 
joke  in  the  family  circle.  Early  in  1861,  he  left 
his  relations  at  Mentone,  and  made  a  short  tour, 
his  first  experience  of  Italy.  He  passed  through 
Genoa,  Turin,  and  Milan,  and  reached  Venice. 
He  wrote  home  his  impressions  in  a  paraphrase 
of  Alfred  de  Musset,  beginning : 

In  red  Venice  here 
Not  one  horse  a-stir. 
Not  one  fisher  afloat. 
Not  one  boat. 

Swinburne's  whimsical  dislike  of  "the  weary 
Mediterranean,  drear  to  see,"  "one  dead  flat 
sapphire,  void  of  wrath,"  was  often  reiterated, 
but  he  had  no  great  knowledge  of  its  moods.  In 
one  of  his  letters  he  speaks  of  "The  Riviera,  que 
diable !    it's  the  dullest  bit  of  earth  in  Europe  I 


C8     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

should  think,  but  you  can't  die  there  if  you  try, 
and  the  cHmate  is  divine  for  invahds,  though  7, 
who  am  never  unwell  but  by  my  own  doing  for  a 
day  or  two,  can't  breathe  it,  it's  so  ultra-stimulat- 
ing and  soothing  at  once  to  the  nerves." 

On  his  return  to  London  he  resumed  relations 
with  the  old  artistic  friends  who  have  already 
been  mentioned.  Amongst  these  Rossetti  was 
the  most  prominent,  and  he  took,  almost  im- 
mediately, the  position  which  Nichol  had  held 
at  Oxford,  as  the  somewhat  elder  guardian-friend 
whose  strong  will  guided  and  supported  the  child- 
like nature  of  Swinburne.  In  his  Record  of 
Friendship,  written  (but  not  published)  at  the 
time  of  Rossetti's  death,  we  are  told  by  the 
younger  poet  that  it  was  at  the  end  of  the  year 
1860  that  the  acquaintance  which  began  at 
Oxford  ripened  into  an  affectionate  intimacy, 
"shaped  and  coloured,  on  his  side,  by  the  cordial 
kindness  and  exuberant  generosity  which  to  the 
last,  I  am  told,  distinguished  [Rossetti's]  recogni- 
tion of  younger  men's  efforts  or  attempts :  on 
mine,  I  can  confidently  say,  by  gratitude  as  loyal 
and  admiration  as  fervent  as  ever  strove  and 
ever  failed  to  express  all  the  sweet  and  sudden 
passion  of  youth  towards  greatness  in  its  elder." 

Rossetti  adopted,  with  a  full  and  almost 
boisterous  appreciation  of  the  qualities  of  Swin- 
burne, and  a  tender  indulgence  to  his  frailties,  a 
tone  of  authority  in  dealing  with  "my  little 
Northumbrian  friend,"  as  he  used  to  call  him, 
which  was  eminently  wholesome.  The  attitude 
was  that  of  a  strong  elder  brother  to  a  delicate 
younger  one,   and  it  combined,   with  great  for- 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  69 

bearance  and  a  generous  and  ever  vociferous 
facility  in  praising,  a  certain  firmness,  almost  a 
discipline.  There  can  be  no  question  for  the 
biographer  who  examines  the  whole  life  of  Swin- 
burne, that  D.  G.  Rossetti  exercised  over  him  a 
more  restraining  and  yet  stimulating  influence 
than  any  one  else ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can 
it  be  overlooked  that  Swinburne,  whose  general 
culture,  literary  enthusiasm  and  knowledge  of 
poetry  far  exceeded  Rossetti's,  was  of  immense 
service  to  his  friend  in  the  guidance  of  his  imagina- 
tion. As  an  example  of  what  Swinburne  could 
do  in  this  direction,  I  may  print  here,  for  the  first 
time,  a  note  which  I  find  in  Mr.  Wise's  collection 
of  his  MSS.     It  is  dated  1886 : 

Entre  nous  (bien  entendu)  it  was  I  —  my  love  of  the 
uncompleted  poem  must  excuse  the  egotism  of  the 
revelation  —  who  suggested  as  the  final  solution  or  cata- 
strophe of  "The  Bride's  Prelude,"  that  the  brothers 
should  kill  Urscelyn  the  moment  he  has  made  an  honest 
woman  of  poor  Aloyse,  and  so  leave  her  to  live  in  peace 
and  honour  with  her  restored  child.  D.  G.  R.  told  me 
that  what  had  hindered  him  from  continuing  the  poem 
was  that  he  could  not  think  of  a  satisfactory  close  to  the 
story  (in  my  constant  opinion,  his  finest  and  most 
pathetic  invention),  and  when  I,  modestly,  and  with  very 
real  and  sincere  diffidence,  suggested  this,  he  jumped 
at  it  (so  to  speak)  in  a  manner  most  flattering  to  my 
young  self-esteem  (all  this,  of  course,  was  in  the  old  days 
of  Chatham  Place)  and  said  he  would  finish  on  those 
lines. 

This  must  have  been  in  1861.  Sometimes  the 
master  would  not  be  so  docile  under  the  hand  of 
the  pupil.     Swinburne  gently  mourned,  not  more 


70  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

harshly  than  a  turtle-dove  might  do,  over  the 
obstinacy  of  his  adored  Gabriel,  in  sticking  to 

...  a  French  couplet  showing  his  ignorance  of  the  rules 
of  French  verse  —  veut  and  cheveux  being  no  more  ad- 
missible as  rhymes  than  God  and  rot.  (Read  —  if  any- 
thing — 

rien  ne  veux 
Qu'une  rose  a  mes  cheveux.) 

But  here  D.  G.  R.,  alas,  thought  that  he 
knew  best.  Such  diversions  made  the  great 
painting-room  at  No.  14  Chatham  Place,  Black- 
friars  Bridge,  with  its  magnificent  view  over  the 
river,  a  very  paradise  to  Swinburne  in  these 
earliest  London  days. 

These  were  also  the  days  of  the  reform  of 
artistic  ornament  and  furniture  under  the  auspices 
of  William  Morris  and  his  companions.  Swin- 
burne, as  we  have  seen,  was  a  frequent  and  a 
favourite  guest  at  the  Red  House,  and  Mrs. 
Morris,  for  whom  he  had  an  admiration  approach- 
ing to  worship,  never  ceased  to  speak  of  him  with 
high  appreciation.  He  liked  to  be  present  when 
the  artists  were  at  work,  and  Morris  described  to 
Mr.  Cockerell  how  Swinburne  would  read  his 
poems  aloud,  covering  up  one  eye  with  his  hand 
as  he  did  so.  This  curious  trick  I  also  recollect, 
without  exactly  understanding  the  object  of  it; 
Swinburne  often  seemed  to  have  a  difficulty  in 
focussing  his  sight,  which  I  have  no  doubt  was 
astigmatic.  His  remarkable  head  was  often 
recognisable  in  the  works  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites, 
and  Philip  Webb  used  to  report  that  when  the 
early  Morris  glass  was  exposed  at  Scarborough, 


EARLY  LIFE   IN  LONDON  71 

George  Campfield,  one  of  the  best  workmen  of 
the  firm,  shouted  out,  "Blest  if  they  haven't  put 
in  Httle  Carroty -locks."  This  was  a  reference  to 
Swinburne,  whose  portrait  he  detected. 

Late  in  the  summer  Algernon  went  back  to 
Northumberland,  where  his  grandfather's  long 
life  was  gradually  closing.  Half-way  through 
his  ninety-ninth  year  Sir  John  Swinburne  died 
at  Capheaton  on  the  26th  of  September  1860. 
After  the  funeral,  his  grandson  moved  over  to 
stay  with  the  Trevelyans  at  Wallington,  where 
Lady  Trevelyan  received  him  with  that  indulgent 
sympathy  which  so  much  endeared  her  to  her 
friends.  Sir  George  O.  Trevelyan  tells  me  that 
he  heard  him,  more  than  once,  reciting  his  poems 
to  the  ladies  in  the  Italian  saloon  at  Wallington. 
*'He  sat  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  with  one  foot 
curled  up  on  the  seat  of  his  chair  beneath  him, 
declaiming  verse  with  a  very  different  intonation 
and  emphasis  from  that  with  which  our  set  of 
young  Cantabs  read  Byron  and  Keats  to  each 
other  in  our  own  college  rooms  at  Trinity." 

Unfortunately,  these  symposia  were  often  more 
completely  to  the  taste  of  the  hostess  than  of 
the  host.  One  day  Sir  Walter  Trevelyan  came 
into  the  drawing-room  and  found  a  French  novel 
lying  on  the  table.  He  asked  how  it  got  there, 
and  was  told  that  Algernon  had  brought  it  as  a 
gift.  It  was  nothing  worse,  I  believe,  than  a 
volume  of  the  Comedie  Humaine,  but  he  was 
a  rash  man  who  in  those  days  recommended  a 
French  book  to  an  English  lady.  Even  if  she 
made  no  objection,  her  male  relations  were  sure 
to  take  umbrage.     Sir  Walter  Trevelyan  threw 


72     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

the  book  on  the  fire  with  a  very  rough  remark, 
and  Swinburne  marched  with  great  dignity  out 
of  the  house.  The  aUenation  was  not  permanent, 
and  Swinburne  was  soon  on  the  old  affectionate 
terms,  not  merely  with  Lady  Trevelyan,  but  w  ith 
Sir  Walter.  He  proceeded  to  the  W.  B.  Scotts 
in  Newcastle,  where  Scott  completed  in  October 
an  absurdly-drawn  portrait,  which  he  had  begun 
in  the  previous  January.  Odd  as  is  this  work  of 
art,  it  is  an  invaluable  record  of  Algernon's 
expression   and   colour   at   that   time.^ 

The  extreme  violence  of  the  denunciation  of 
W.  B.  Scott  which  Swinburne  unfortunately 
allowed  himself  to  publish  on  the  appearance  of 
Scott's  Autobiographical  Notes  in  1892  has  led  to 
a  discrediting  of  the  witness  of  that  old  friend's 
recollections.  But  it  must  in  fairness  be  recorded 
that  there  had  been  no  cessation  of  friendly 
relations  when  Scott  died,  at  an  advanced  age,  in 
1890,  and  that  Swinburne  greeted  his  departure 
in  memorial  verses  which  celebrated  the  dead 
man  as  "poet  and  painter  and  friend,  thrice  dear." 
In  these  lines  he  did  not  exaggerate  the  merit  of 
Scott's  art,  which  was  not  great,  but  he  did 
warmest  justice  to  his  faith  and  fervour,  and  to 
the  nobility  of  his  aim.  Unfortunately,  the 
indiscretion  of  an  editor  presently  revealed  that 
Scott,  who  had  no  sense  of  humour,  had  recorded, 
with  a  certain  bluntness,  his  jealousy  of  younger 
and  more  famous  friends.  Swinburne,  whose  pen 
was  ever  too  near  his  fingers,  dashed  into  tem- 

*  It  became  the  property  of  Mr.  W.  R.  Raper,  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford, 
to  whose  kindness  I  owe  a  reproduction  of  it.  A  Veek  before  his  lamented 
death  (July  18,  1915)  Mr.  Raper  dictated  for  me  his  recollections  of 
Swinburne. 


EARLY  LIFE   IN  LONDON  73 

pestuous  reprisals,  but  these  (we  ought  to  note) 
he  never  reprinted,  while  retaining  in  publication 
his  praise  of  his  clumsy  but  faithful  old  acquaint- 
ance. This  incident  will  be  dealt  with  later,  but 
it  is  necessary  to  say  here,  that  in  spite  of 
what  Swinburne  afterwards  wrote  in  his  haste, 
W.  B.  Scott  was  an  encouraging  influence  in  the 
poet's  early  life,  while  his  records  of  the  years 
with  which  we  are  now  dealing,  although  loose, 
are  true  in  their  general  bearing. 

One  of  the  earliest  occupations  of  Algernon's 
leisure  after  his  arrival  in  town  was  his  study  of 
the  writings  of  Charles  J.  Wells,  a  living  but 
forgotten  poet  of  sixty  years  of  age,  contemporary 
with  Keats  and  Hazlitt,  who  had  long  abandoned 
the  practice  of  literature  and  had  accepted  his 
own  failure  with  resignation.  D.  G.  Rossetti, 
probably  in  1847,  had  met  with  the  two  books  of 
Wells,  his  prose  Stories  after  Nature  (1822)  and 
his  huge  drama  in  blank  verse,  Joseph  and  his 
Brethren  (1824).  These  he  had  read  with  surprise, 
and  the  latter  with  "insane  exultation."  In 
1849  Rossetti  had  planned  a  journey  to  Quimper, 
where  Wells  lived,  for  the  purpose  of  persuading 
him  to  republish  Joseph  in  a  second  edition. 
Rossetti  now,  in  1860,  passed  Wells  over  to 
Swinburne,  who  accepted  him  with  rapture. 
Joseph  and  his  Brethren  was  already  so  rare 
that  Swinburne  was  obliged  to  work  on  it  at  the 
British  Museum,  where  he  copied  out  half  the 
poem.  He  recommended  it  ardently  to  Monckton 
Milnes  (Oct.  15,  1860),  adding,  "I  should  be  very 
glad  if  I  had  anything  to  do  with  helping  it  to  a 
little  of  the  credit  it  must  gain  in  the  end."     At 


74     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

this  time  he  had  finished  an  article  analysing 
Joseph  and  his  Brethren,  in  the  course  of  which 
Rossetti  had  helped  him  with  the  choice  of 
extracts.  It  is  not  possible  to  discover  in  what 
degree  this  lost  article  of  1860  coincided  with  the 
introduction  Swinburne  published  with  the  edi- 
tion which  he  persuaded  his  own  publishers  to 
issue  in  1876.  But  it  will  be  noted  that  certain 
passages  in  the  latter  are  spoken  of  as  the  opinion 
of  "a  reader  of  the  age  at  which  this  book  was 
written,"  and  are  given  in  inverted  commas. 
Swinburne  being  in  1860  of  the  same  age  as  Wells 
was  when  he  wrote  Joseph,  I  think  we  may  take 
for  granted  that  these  passages  at  least  are  part 
of  the  original  essay.  Swinburne's  almost  fanati- 
cal admiration  for  Wells'  poetry,  which  survived 
the  disconcerting  indifference  to  it  of  the  old 
dramatist  himself,  gradually  became  moderate, 
but  it  never  entirely  ceased.  Joseph  and  his 
Brethren  undoubtedly  had  an  effect  on  his  own 
dramatic  manner. 

Shortly  after  Swinburne's  arrival  in  London 
he  had  formed  one  new  acquaintance,  who  has 
just  been  named,  and  who  was  destined  to  fill  a 
large  place  in  his  life.  This  was  Richard  Monckton 
Milnes,  then  fifty  years  of  age,  and  a  foremost 
figure  in  the  literary  and  political  society  of  the 
day.  As  Milnes  was  not  at  that  time  acquainted 
either  with  the  Swinburne  familj^  or  with  the 
poet-painters,  it  is  thought  likely  that  Lady 
Trevelyan  had  commended  her  young  friend  to  a 
possible  patron.  On  the  5th  of  May  1860,  in 
reply  to  a  formal  summons,  Swinburne  called  at 
Milnes'    town    house,    16    Upper    Brook   Street. 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  75 

The  two  were  soon  on  terms  of  high  facetious 
famiharity,  and  during  the  next  few  years,  in 
particular,  Milnes  was  infinitely  serviceable  to  the 
young  friend  who  so  much  amused  and  stimu- 
lated him.  One  of  the  first  things  Swinburne 
did  was  to  introduce  Milnes  to  the  names  and 
work  of  Rossetti,  Morris,  and  Meredith.  A  letter 
(October  15th,  1860),  gives  an  early  touch  or  two  : 

I  have  done  some  more  work  to  Chastelard,  and  rubbed 
up  one  or  two  other  things :  my  friend  George  Meredith 
has  asked  me  to  send  some  to  "Once  a  Week,"  which 
valuable  publication  he  props  up  occasionally  with 
fragments  of  his  own.  Rossetti  has  just  done  a  drawing 
of  a  female  model  and  myself  embracing  —  I  need  not 
say  in  the  most  fervent  and  abandoned  style  —  meant 
for  a  frontispiece  to  his  ItaHan  translations.  Everybody, 
who  knows  me  already,  salutes  the  likeness  with  a  yell  of 
recognition.  When  the  book  comes  out,  I  shall  have  no 
refuge  but  the  grave. 

The  Early  Italian  Poets,  however,  came  out 
with  no  design  of  the  kind  described,  although 
the  drawing  was  not  lost.  But  before  Rossetti's 
volume  appeared,  Swinburne  himself  had  pub- 
lished his  first  book.  This  was  The  Queen  Mother 
and  Rosamond,  containing  two  dramas,  and  pub- 
lished before  Christmas  1860;  the  poet  being 
now  again  in  Northumberland.  Swinburne's  odd 
luck  with  publishers  affronted  him  at  this  outset 
of  his  career,  for  his  volume  had  scarcely  issued 
with  the  imprint  of  Basil  Montagu  Pickering, 
than  it  was  mysteriously  withdrawn  to  reappear 
with  that  of  Edward  Moxon.  No  particulars 
appear  to  be  forthcoming,  but  in  both  hands  the 
insuccess  of  the  venture  was  conspicuous.     Long 


76    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SAYINBURNE 

afterwards,  Swinburne  told  me  that  "of  all  still- 
born books,  The  Queen  Mother  was  the  stillest," 
for  that,  when  he  had  given  away  a  few  copies, 
and  a  few  more  had  been  dispersed  to  the  press, 
its  circulation  ceased.  Not  one  single  copy  was 
sold,  until  long  afterwards.  Nobody  read  it, 
nobody  saw  it,  nobody  heard  of  it. 

It  was  strange  that  no  critic  of  1860  had  the 
intelligence  to  perceive  what  an  interesting  thing 
The  Queen  Mother  was.  Partly,  no  doubt,  the 
dulness  of  the  first  act  discouraged  perusal.  But 
more  was  perhaps  due  to  the  fact  that  the  models 
on  which  the  apparatus  of  the  drama  was  founded 
were  quite  unfamiliar  to  readers  of  that  day. 
Briefly,  those  models  were  Chapman  in  his  French 
tragedies,  and,  to  a  much  less  extent,  Wells  in 
Joseph  and  his  Brethren.  Swinburne  approaches 
the  style  of  Chapman  exactly  as  the  dramatists 
of  the  romantic  revival,  such  as  Byron,  Coleridge, 
and  Barry  Cornwall,  had  approached  that  of 
Shakespeare,  but  with  more  success.  He  was 
seized  with  a  strong  desire  to  reform  the  idea  of 
poetical  drama,  based  on  the  Elizabethans,  which 
had  been  illustrated  by  Beddoes,  P.  J.  Bailey, 
and  particularly  by  Dobell,  in  his  Balder  (1853), 
a  poem  that  had  violently  attracted  and  then 
repelled  Swinburne  in  his  boyhood.  He  saw 
that  these  so-called  dramas  were  really  incoherent 
masses  of  dexterous  or  impressive  verse  in  its 
essence  lyrical.  He  wished  to  re-constitute  a 
subtle  and  sententious  kind  of  dramatic  writing, 
overlaid  with  ingenious  touches,  which  should 
revive  the  pleasure  experienced  in  reading  plays 
like  Chahot  and  Bussy  dWnihois. 


THEEARCr  ITALIAN:  POETS 

lorom  CitJlo  SAlca^rrio  tb  Dante Alis^iieri 


Portrait  of  Swinburne  in  a  Design  by  D.  Gabriel  Rossetti  for  a  Frontispiece 
to  The  Early  Italian  Poets.     Engraved  by  J.  D.  Cooper. 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  77 

We  may  even  conjecture  that  a  certain 
fine  tirade  in  The  Revenge  of  Bussy  d'Amhois 
actually  started  The  Queen  Mother,  which  also  is 
a  rapid  tragical  presentment  of  the  Eve  of  St. 
Bartholomew.  It  is  almost  a  good  play,  being 
altogether  a  delicate  and  artificial  poem.  The 
blank  verse  in  which  it  is  composed  is  already 
wonderful,  —  sinuous,  varied  and  sweet,  of  a 
perfect  originality,  with  no  trace  of  the  prevailing 
manner  of  Tennyson.  There  is  too  much  elabora- 
tion in  the  language,  even  in  its  marvellously 
accomplished  monosyllabic  effects,  too  much  of 
the  affected  Jacobean  humour  in  its  movement. 
The  plot  is  turbid  at  first,  and  never  becomes 
quite  easy  to  follow,  although  with  the  third  act 
there  is  a  great  increase  of  clarity,  and  the  fifth 
act,  unlike  most  fifth  acts,  is  the  best  in  the  play. 
There  are  very  fine  passages,  such  as  the  scene 
where  the  Queen  Mother,  the  King  and  Guise 
visit  Admiral  Coligny  in  his  bed,  and  the  dialogue 
between  Charles  and  Denise  in  the  third  act. 
The  tirades  of  Catherine,  without  being  turgid, 
are  often  in  the  grand  style.  Readers  familiar 
with  the  later  dramas  of  Swinburne  may  be 
startled  by  foreshadowings  of  the  great  scenes 
in  Bothwell.  On  the  whole.  The  Queen  Mother^ 
although  nobody  recognised  it  at  the  time,  is  as  I 
promising  a  first  work  as  ever  a  young  scholar/ 
poet  published. 

Rosamond,  a  one-act  play,  is  of  a  very  different 
character.  This  is  a  study  in  sheer  Pre- 
Raphaelitism,  in  which  dim,  melancholy  figures, 
a  little  uncertain  in  their  anatomy,  are  exhibited 
against   a   brilliant    and   minute   background   of 


78  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

pure  colour.  It  is  like  a  water-colour  drawing 
by  Rossetti  translated  into  verse  —  beautiful 
wandering  verse  of  this  kind : 

Maids  will  keep  round  me,  girls  with  smooth  worn  hair 
When  mine  is  hard,  no  silk  in  it  to  feel, 
Tall  girls  to  dress  me,  laughing  underbreath. 
Too  low  for  gold  to  tighten  at  the  waist. 
Eh,  the  hinge  sharpens  at  the  grate  across  ? 
Five  minutes  now  to  get  the  green  walk  through 
And  turn  —  the  chestnut  leaves  will  take  his  hair 
If  he  turn  quick ;   or  I  shall  hear  some  bud 
Fall,  or  some  pebble's  chink  along  the  fence. 
Or  stone  his  heel  grinds,  or  torn  lime-blossom 
Flung  at  me  from  behind ;   not  poppies  now, 
Nor  marigolds,  but  rose  and  lime-flower. 

There  is  much  of  the  Oxford  spirit  about 
Rosamond,  which  is  an  undergraduate  effort 
much  revised.  Indeed,  we  have  already  seen 
that  this  is  probably  the  drama  which  Swinburne 
read  to  Stubbs,  and  tore  up  in  a  passion,  and 
rewrote  from  memory,  when  he  was  staying  at 
Navestock. 

In  spite,  or  perhaps  because  of  his  intense 
preoccupation  with  dramatic  poetry,  Swinburne 
was  never  much  of  a  play-goer.  He  declared  in 
after  years  that  he  had  registered  a  solemn  oath 
in  Heaven  that  he  would  never  again  go  to  a 
Shakespearian  representation  on  the  stage  after 
seeing  Fechter  in  the  part  of  Othello.  This  must 
have  been  in  October  1861.  He  thought  the  actor 
handsome,  and  admired  his  gestures,  but  held 
his  treatment  of  the  smothering  scene  to  be 
abominable.     When  he  came  to  the  part  — 

It  is  the  cause,  it  is  the  cause,  my  soul  — 
Yet  she  must  die  or  she'll  betray  more  men, 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  79 

*' perhaps  the  most  perfect  bit  in  Shakespeare," 
Fechter  took  up  a  mirror  and  looked  into  it, 
saying,  as  his  own  face  was  reflected  — 

It  is  the  cause,  it  is  the  cause  ! 

At  this,  Swinburne  told  Dr.  Bird  and  his  sister 
many  years  afterwards : 

I  wanted  to  leap  out  of  the  box  I  was  in  and  break  his 
neck,  and  then  to  rush  out  of  the  theatre,  flying  as  if  light- 
ning were  at  my  heels.  When  I  was  a  child,  before 
I  could  understand  things,  I  read  Othello,  and  though 
I  did  not  know  what  was  the  guilt  of  Desdemona,  could 
not  guess  at  the  adultery,  yet  I  distinctly  knew  that 
whatever  "the  cause"  might  be  it  applied  to  something 
she  had  done. 

So  far  as  I  know  he  kept  the  vow  implicitly, 
to  such  a  degree  that  when,  about  1876,  he  wrote 
the  song,  "Love  laid  his  sleepless  head,"  for  a 
performance  of  (I  think)  A  Winter  s  Tale,  and 
had  accepted,  under  great  pressure,  an  invitation 
for  the  first  night,  at  the  last  moment  he  insisted 
on  my  taking  his  place.  He  always  asserted 
that  no  living  actors  were  adequate  to  the  repre- 
sentation of  Victor  Hugo's  tragedies,  and  depre- 
cated the  presentation  of  those  plays. 

Swinburne  was  now  occupied  with  a  scheme 
which  had  begun  to  take  shape  at  Oxford  and 
which  was  not  finally  abandoned  till  much  later. 
This  was  the  composition  of  a  cycle  of  nineteen 
or  twenty  prose  stories,  to  be  issued  as  the 
Triameron,  in  rivalry  with  Boccaccio  and  Mar- 
guerite de  Navarre.  He  had  been  much  im- 
pressed by  the  Nouvelles  frangoises  en  prose  du 
XIIP  siecle,  which   Morris  and  he  had  read  in 


80     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

college,  but  a  stronger  influence  now  was  that  of 
the  Italian  Novellino.  The  only  one  of  these 
tales  which  Swinburne  printed  was  Dead  Love^ 
which  he  sent  to  "Once  a  Week"  in  18G2  and 
published  in  book-form  in  1864.  But  several 
others  were  written  and  three  still  exist  in  MS. 
Moreover,  about  the  year  18G1,  he  wrote  a 
Chronicle  of  Queen  Fredegond,  which  remains 
unpublished ;  though  much  longer,  this  also  is 
probabl}^  intended  for  the  Triameron ;  it  is  in 
part  paraphrased  from  the  Historia  Francorum 
of  Gregory  of  Tours.  The  library  of  his  uncle, 
the  Earl  of  Ashburnham,  contained  a  copy  of 
the  1561  edition  of  this  rare  book,  and  there,  it 
is  probable,  Swinburne  gained  his  remarkable 
intimacy  with  the  Prankish  kings  of  France.  He 
once  told  me  that  the  mediaeval  and  early  French 
sections  of  his  uncle's  famous  collection  had  been 
a  source  of  unfailing  enjoyment  to  him. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  was  one  of 
the  happiest  times  in  Algernon's  life.  His  health 
had  not  begun  to  fail  him  in  the  least  degree. 
He  had  no  anxietj^  for  the  future,  nothing  to 
exasperate  him  in  the  present.  Very  small  part 
of  his  year  was  spent  consecutively  in  London, 
from  which  he  was  for  ever  breaking  away  to  the 
related  families  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  to  the 
Trevelyans  and  the  Scotts  in  Northumberland, 
or  to  Lord  Ashburnham  at  Battle.  At  each  of 
these  places  he  could  ride  or  climb  or  swim  to 
his  heart's  content,  throwing  off  all  the  dust  of 
books  in  the  brilliant  exultation  of  movement. 
That  ecstasy  of  physical  well-being,  that  April 
of  the  blood,  could  but  decline  and  fade.     Some 


EARLY  LIFE   IN  LONDON  81 

twenty  years  afterwards  Swinburne  described  his 
dazzling  adolescence  in  temperate  numbers : 

The  morning  song  beneath  the  stars  that  fled 

With  twiUght  through  the  moonless  mountain  air. 
While  Youth  with  burning  lips  and  wreathless  hair 

Sang  towards  the  sun  that  was  to  crown  his  head, 

Rising ;   the  hopes  that  triumphed  and  fell  dead ; 

The  sweet  swift  eyes  and  songs  of  hours  that  were ;  — 

These  may'st  thou  not  give  back  for  ever ;  these 
As  at  the  sea's  heart  all  her  wrecks  lie  waste. 
Lie  deeper  than  the  sea ; 

But  flowers  thou  may'st,  and  winds,  and  hours  of  ease. 
And  all  its  April  to  the  world  thou  may'st 

Give  back,  and  half  my  April  back  to  me. 

With  1862,  and  the  approach  of  his  twenty- 
sixth  year,  he  began  to  envisage  life  more  seriously. 
An  insatiable  reader,  he  had  by  this  time  ac- 
quainted himself  with  the  principal  masterpieces 
of  literature,  and  with  hundreds  of  neglected 
works  from  many  of  which  he  extracted  an  in- 
tenser  pleasure  than  they  had  ever  given  to  a 
reader  before.  Now  for  five  years  he  had  been 
self-apprenticed  to  the  great  masters  of  writing, 
and  although  the  total  failure  of  his  own  solitary 
publication  seems  to  have  left  him  philosophically 
indifferent,  he  was  becoming  more  and  more 
ambitious  to  excel.  His  verses  at  this  time  were 
corrected,  torn  up,  rewritten  from  memory  with 
divers  modifications,  revised  again  and  put  away. 
Nothing  could  be  less  like  the  confident  smooth- 
ness of  composition  which  he  gained  later  on 
than  the  labour  with  which  he  filed  his  early 
works.  No  one  will  ever  know  how  many  times, 
between  1858  and  1865,  Chastelard  was  destroyed 
and  recast,  polished  and  thrust  aside  in  despair. 


82  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

It  was  at  this  time  that  Swinburne  entered 
upon  the  soUtary  romance  of  his  Hfe,  and  suffered 
a  crushing  disappointment.  He  was  presented 
to  great  friends  of  Ruskin  and  of  Burne-Jones, 
the  pathologist  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir)  John  Simon 
and  his  wife  Jane,  whom  Ruskin  called  "his 
dear  P.R.S.,"  or  Pre-Raphaelite  sister.  They 
extended  a  very  charming  hospitality  to  a  small 
but  distinguished  circle,  and  Swinburne  became 
intimate  with  the  family.  Here  he  met  with  a 
young  kinswoman  of  the  host  and  hostess,  a 
graceful  and  vivacious  girl  who  made  a  violent 
impression  on  the  young  poet's  heart,  and  who 
seemed,  or  so  he  thought,  to  encourage  his 
advances.  She  gave  him  roses,  she  played  and 
sang  to  him,  and  he  conceived  from  her  gracious 
ways  an  encouragement  which  she  was  far  from 
seriously  intending.  He  declared  his  passion, 
suddenly,  and  no  doubt  in  a  manner  which 
seemed  to  her  preposterous  and  violent.  More 
from  nervousness,  probably,  then  from  ill-will, 
she  broke  out  laughing  in  his  face.  He  was 
deeply  chagrined,  and,  in  a  way  which  those  who 
knew  him  will  easily  imagine  for  themselves,  he 
showed  his  displeasure,  and  they  parted  on  the 
worst  of  terms. 

In  a  very  wretched  frame  of  mind,  Swinburne 
went  up  to  Northumberland,  and  there  wrote 
*'The  Triumph  of  Time,"  which  is  the  most 
profound  and  the  most  touching  of  all  his  personal 
poems.  Speaking  to  me  of  this  incident,  in  1876, 
he  assured  me  that  the  stanzas  of  this  wonderful 
lyric  represented  with  the  exactest  fidelity  the 
emotions  which  passed   through   his  mind   when 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  83 

his  anger  had  died  down,  and  when  nothing 
remained  but  the  infinite  pity  and  the  pain.  The 
appeal  to  the  sea  in  "The  Triumph  of  Time,"  as 
to  "the  great  sweet  Mother  and  lover  of  men," 
was  extremely  natural  on  the  lips  of  one  who 
loved  the  sea  as  it  was  never  loved  before  even 
by  an  Englishman : 

I  shall  sleep,  and  move  with  the  moving  ships, 
Change  as  the  winds  change,  veer  in  the  tide ; 

My  lips  will  feast  on  the  foam  of  thy  lips, 

I  shall  rise  with  thy  rising,  with  thee  subside ; 

Sleep,  and  not  know  if  she  be,  if  she  were. 

Filled  full  with  life  to  the  eyes  and  hair. 

As  a  rose  is  fulfilled  to  the  roseleaf  tips 

With  splendid  summer  and  perfume  and  pride. 

The  whole  poem  deserves  close  study  as  a 
revelation  of  the  poet's  innermost  feelings,  which 
he  exposes  with  an  equal  frankness  in  no  other 
section  of  his  work. 

I  shall  go  my  ways,  tread  out  my  measure. 

Fill  the  days  of  my  daily  breath 
With  fugitive  things  not  good  to  treasure. 

Do  as  the  world  doth,  say  as  it  saith ; 
But  if  we  had  loved  each  other  —  O  sweet, 
Had  you  felt,  lying  under  the  palms  of  your  feet, 
The  heart  of  my  heart,  beating  harder  for  pleasure 

To  feel  you  tread  it  to  dust  and  death  — 

Ah,  had  I  not  taken  my  life  up  and  given 

All  that  life  gives  and  the  years  let  go. 
The  wine  and  the  honey,  the  balm  and  leaven. 

The  dreams  reared  high  and  the  hopes  brought  low  ? 
Come  life,  come  death,  not  a  word  be  said ; 
Should  I  lose  you  living,  and  vex  you  dead  ? 
I  shall  never  tell  you  on  earth ;   and  in  heaven, 

If  I  cry  to  you  then,  will  you  hear  or  know  ? 


84     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

This  episode  was  the  only  one  of  its  kind  in 
Swinburne's  experience,  and  it  was  with  a  certain 
fidelity  that  he  carried  down  to  the  grave  his 
memory  of  the  one  girl  whom  he  ever  asked  to 
share  "the  wine  and  leaven  of  lovely  life"  with 
him. 

.The  painful  realities  of  life  were  once  more 
brought  home  to  the  enthusiastic  young  visionary 
by  an  event  which  has  often  been  described.  On 
the  23rd  of  May  1860,  D.  G.  Rossetti  had  mar- 
ried Lizzie  Siddell,  between  whom  and  Algernon 
Swinburne  a  boy-and-girl  friendship  immediately 
sprang  up.  They  were  alike  in  personal  appear- 
ance, with  the  same  abundant  red-gold  hair; 
they  were  equally  inexperienced,  restless,  and 
wayward,  with  the  same  playfulness,  the  same 
absurdities.  Rossetti  was  much  entertained  by 
their  innocent  intimacy,  occasionally  having  to 
call  them  both  to  order,  as  he  might  a  pair  of 
charming  angora  cats  romping  too  boisterously 
together.  When  the  Rossettis  settled  in  14 
Chatham  Place,  Swinburne  was  an  almost  in- 
cessant visitor,  and  the  three  commonly  went 
out  of  an  evening  to  eat  at  a  restaurant.  On  the 
10th  of  February  1862  they  dined  at  the  Sa- 
bloniere  Hotel  in  Leicester  Square,  and  Rossetti 
saw  his  wife  home,  and  went  out  again.  WTien 
he  returned,  she  was  dead,  or  dying,  having 
taken  an  overdose  of  laudanum.  At  the  inquest 
Swinburne  was  a  chief  witness,  but  no  newspaper 
reported  his  evidence,  which  dwelt  upon  the 
devoted  affection  existing  between  husband  and 
wife.  The  following  account,  however,  is  part 
of    a    statement,    still    unpublished,    which    was 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  85 

found     among     Swinburne's     papers     after     his 
death : 

I  had  come  to  know  and  to  regard  with  little  less 
than  a  brother's  affection  the  noble  lady  whom  he  had 
recently  married.  On  the  evening  of  her  terrible  death 
we  had  all  dined  together  at  a  "restaurant"  which 
Rossetti  had  been  accustomed  to  frequent.  Next 
morning,  on  coming  by  appointment  to  sit  for  my  por- 
trait, I  heard  that  she  had  died  in  the  night,  under 
circumstances  which  afterwards  made  necessary  my 
appearance  and  evidence  at  the  inquest  held  on  her 
remains.  The  anguish  of  her  widower,  when  next  we 
met,  under  the  roof  of  the  mother  with  whom  he  had 
sought  refuge,  I  cannot  remember,  at  more  than  twenty 
years'  distance,  without  some  recrudescence  of  emotion. 
With  sobs  and  broken  speech  ...  he  appealed  to  my 
friendship,  in  the  name  of  her  regard  for  me  —  such 
regard  he  assured  me,  as  she  had  felt  for  no  other  of  his 
friends  —  to  cleave  to  him  in  this  time  of  sorrow,  to  come 
and  keep  house  with  him  as  soon  as  a  residence  could  be 
found. 

Swinburne  is  said  to  have  been  present  when 
Rossetti  thrust  the  sole  manuscript  of  his  poems 
into  his  wife's  coffin,  and  it  was  to  his  marvellous 
memory  that  Morris,  Meredith,  and  Burne-Jones 
principally  trusted  for  the  reconstruction  of  those 
lost  lyrics.^  In  the  presence  of  his  "little 
Northumbrian  friend"  Rossetti  found  comfort 
and  distraction,  and  the  comrades  became  more 
inseparable  than  ever.     During   some  months  of 

^  One  of  these  copies,  that  of  "The  Song  of  the  Bower,"  has  passed 
through  my  hands.  It  presents  some  interesting  variants  from  the 
accepted  text,  but  whether  tb;  -e  are  due  to  failure  of  Swinburne's 
memory  or  to  alterations  afterwards  introduced  by  D.  G.  Rossetti  him- 
self, it  would  be  rash  to  say.  As  is  well  known,  the  original  MSS.  were 
extracted  from  Lizzie  Rossetti's  coflBn  long  afterwards,  in  1869,  by  an 
order  from  the  Home  Office. 


86     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

1862,  while  the  scheme  of  a  general  household  for 
the  painter-poets  was  being  developed,  Swinburne 
moved  into  lodgings  in  the  house  of  a  music 
teacher,  77  Newman  Street,  Oxford  Street,  and 
here  he  was  active  and  happy  for  some  months, 
until  Rossetti  was  ready  to  receive  him  at  16 
Cheyne  Walk,  Chelsea,  a  Queen  Anne  mansion 
commonly  called  Tudor  House,  of  which  he  had 
become  the  tenant.  Definite  rooms  were  set 
apart  for  Swinburne,  and  for  William  Michael 
Rossetti  and  Meredith,  who  were  sub-tenants. 
Swinburne,  who  paid  more  than  the  others,  had 
a  sitting-room  of  his  own  on  the  ground  floor. 
WTiat  made  Tudor  House  particularly  delightful 
was  the  large  garden  at  the  back.  It  may  not 
be  generally  known  that  Tudor  House  was  part 
of  the  mansion  occupied  by  Queen  Katherine 
Parr  after  the  death  of  Henry  VIII. ,  and  that  it 
was  here  that  the  Lord  High  Admiral  Seymour 
visited  and  paid  his  court  to  her.  This  was 
Swinburne's  London  home  for  nearly  two  years. 
The  poet  had  hitherto  been  entirely  an  amateur 
in  literature,  that  is  to  say,  he  had  never  sold  a 
manuscript  or  written  an  article  at  the  discretion 
of  an  editor.^  This  is  worth  observing,  as  an 
oddity  in  the  career  of  one  of  the  most  professional 
of  all  great  men  of  letters.  He  was  beginning  to 
fret  under  his  inability  to  address  a  wider  public 
than  the  circle  of  congenial  Pre-Raphaelite  friends. 
An  interesting  evidence  of  this  has  lately  come 
to  hand  in  a  letter  (dated  from  14  Chatham 
Place,  Blackfriars,  January  4,   1862)  written  by 

'  The  few  lines  on  Congreve  published  in  1857,  while  he  was  still   an 
undergraduate  at  Oxford,  can  hardly  be  considered. 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  87 

Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  to  Mr.   (afterwards  Sir) 
Theodore  Martin.     In  this  letter  Rossetti  says : 

Now  here  comes  a  petition,  A  young  friend  of  mine 
—  23  [sic]  years  of  age  —  Algernon  Swinburne,  son  of 
Admiral  Swinburne  —  is  a  poet  not  promising  in  the 
common  sense  only,  but  certainly  destined  to  be  one  of 
the  two  or  three  leaders  who  are  to  succeed  Tennyson 
and  the  Brownings,  and  not  one  of  whom  has  certainly 
yet  cropped  up  among  Tannhausers  and  such  like.  At 
present  he  has  his  way  to  make,  and  plenty  of  un- 
published poems  and  tales  —  all  truly  admirable  — 
a  placer;  —  remuneration  as  well  as  fame  being  of  im- 
portance to  him.  Our  friend  Whitly  Stokes  joins  with  me 
in  the  highest  hope  of  his  genius.  Now  were  I  to  send 
you  some  of  his  MSS.,  and  you  thought  as  we  do  of  them, 
would  it  be  possible  to  you,  without  tasking  your  kind- 
ness with  too  much  trouble,  to  give  him  an  introduction 
to  Frazer  or  some  other  vehicle  of  publicity?  Could  you 
let  me  know.?* 

There  is  no  evidence  that  Martin  saw  his  way 
to  taking  any  action  in  the  matter.^  But,  at 
last,  in  Swinburne's  twenty-sixth  year,  the  door  of 
publicity  opened  before  him,  or  at  least  gaped  at 
him  for  a  little  while.  Apparently  through  Monck- 
ton  Milnes,  Swinburne  formed  the  acquaintance  of 
Richard  Holt  Hiitton,  who  had  lately  become 
part-editor  and  part-proprietor  of  the  SpectatoVy 
a  newspaper  which  now  began  to  take  the  fore- 
most place  in  England  as  an  organ  of  intellec- 
tual activity.  Hutton,  like  everybody  else,  was 
dazzled  by  the  young  poet's  knowledge,  and  by 
the  firmness  of  his  taste ;  he  invited  him  to  write, 
in  prose  and  verse,  for  his  paper.     Accordingly, 

^  I  am  obliged  to  my  friend  Lady  Chamwood  for  the  communication 
of  Rossetti's  letter. 


88  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

seven  lyrics  appeared  with  Swinburne's  signature 
between  April  and  September  1862,  and  among 
these  were  "Faustine,"  "A  song  in  time  of 
Revolution,"  and  "The  Sundew,"  highly  char- 
acteristic specimens  of  his  early  maturity.  It  is 
less  easy  to  speak  of  the  prose  contributions, 
because  they  were  anonymous.  Were  it  not  for 
passages  in  private  letters,  it  would  be  dangerous 
to  assert,  what,  however,  those  familiar  with 
Swinburne's  early  style  could  hardly  question, 
that  the  series  of  five  long  articles  on  Les  Mise- 
rahles  of  Victor  Hugo,  and  that  on  Les  Fleurs  du 
Mai  of  Baudelaire  are  his.  There  are  several 
others  which  I  am  privately  certain  are  also 
Swinburne's,  but  I  deprecate  mere  conjecture, 
and  will  not  name  them.^ 

The  considerable  monograph  devoted  to  Les 
Miserables  is  the  earliest  example  of  Swinburne's 
mature  prose  which  we  possess.  The  knowledge 
of  its  existence  was  not  recovered  until  1914, 
when  a  reference  in  one  of  the  poet's  early  letters 
set  me  on  the  track  of  it.  He  was  careful  to  make 
not  the  slightest  reference  to  it  in  later  years, 
doubtless  because  the  tone  of  it  seemed  cool  and 
even  carping  to  him  when  once  he  had  resigned 
himself  to  the  attitude  of  regarding  Victor  Hugo 
as  a  deity,  immune  from  censure.  But  few 
readers  will  be  found  to  deny  that  this  utterance 
of  his  youth  is  more  sane  as  criticism  than  much 
of  what  he  afterwards  published  in  reiterated 
reverberations  of  mere  praise.       The  absence  of 

*  A  request  for  information  on  this  point  made  to  the  present  editor 
of  the  SpeHafor  has  been  met  by  a  very  courteous  expression  of  regret  that 
none  of  the  documents  illustrating  the  history  of  the  paper  in  1862  have 
been  preserved. 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  89 

character  in  the  first  of  these  Spectator  articles 
will  be  noted.  The  young  reviewer  moves  stiffly, 
and  it  is  not  until  his  pen  has  warmed  to  the  use 
of  prose  that  it  learns  to  express  its  master's  will. 
But  the  later  pages  of  this  study  are  among  the 
best  which  Swinburne  ever  wrote,  inspired  with 
enthusiasm,  and  not  yet  spoiled  by  bombastic 
fulness  and  riot  of  antithesis. 

These  articles,  as  they  appeared,  he  sent  to 
Victor  Hugo,  who  acknowledged  them  with  much 
graciousness,  with  so  much,  indeed,  that  the 
critic  was  shocked  at  his  own  excess  of  boldness. 
Algernon  wrote  to  Milnes,  with  whom  he  often  cor- 
responded in  French :  "Si  j'eusse  su  qu'il  (V.  H.) 
deviat  les  lire,  j'aurais  craint  de  lui  avoir  deplu 
en  m'attaquant  aux  philosophes ;  j'ai  aussi  un 
peu  nargue  en  passant  la  vertu  publique,  et  la 
democratic  vertueuse."  The  majestic  bonhomie 
of  "le  maitre  qu'on  a  toujours  venere"  completed 
the  subjugation  of  Swinburne,  and  never  again 
had  he  the  audacity  to  treat  Victor  Hugo  as  an 
ordinary  mortal. 

The  unsigned  study  of  Baudelaire  which 
occupied  so  inordinate  a  space  in  the  Spectator 
for  September  1862  is  a  critical  work  of  still 
higher  importance.  It  marks  Swinburne's 
earliest  excursion  into  the  analysis  of  modern 
French  poetry.  It  required  high  intellectual 
courage  to  champion  in  an  English  periodical 
the  merits  of  any  new  volume  of  French  verse,, 
not  to  speak  of  such  a  volume  as  Les  Fleurs  du 
Mai.  England  had  not  yet  emerged  from  its  long 
attack  of  Podsnappery,  and  there  was  hardly 
a  critic  of  authority  who   ventured  to   advance 


90     ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

the  claims  of  French  poetry.  Victor  Hugo's 
fame  was  that  of  a  dramatist  and  a  noveHst, 
Lamartine's  that  of  a  pohtician ;  to  the  average 
cultivated  Englishman  Vigny  was  absolutely  un- 
known, and  the  British  notion  of  French  lyric  was 
bounded  by  the  fame  of  Beranger  and  Musset, 
whose  sentimentality  Swinburne  hated. 

It  is  not  certain  by  what  means  he  met  with 
the  poems  of  Baudelaire,  which  had  been  issued  in 
June  1857,  and  withdrawn  from  circulation,  after 
a  violent  controversy  and  a  prosecution,  in  August 
of  the  same  year.  The  original  edition  of  Les 
Fleurs  du  Mai  had  at  once  become  an  exceedingly 
rare  book,  and  I  think  that  Swinburne  had  not 
seen  a  copy  of  it.  If  he  had,  he  could  scarcely 
have  avoided  mentioning  some  of  the  suppressed 
pieces,  Les  Epaves,  in  particular  *'Les  Femmes 
Damnees."  A  small  second  edition,  with  Les 
Epaves  omitted,  was  issued  in  Paris  in  1861,  and 
I  feel  no  doubt  that  this  is  the  form  in  which 
Swinburne  first  read  Baudelaire,  as  it  is  certainly 
that  in  which  he  reviewed  him  for  startled  sub- 
scribers to  the  Spectator.  He  did  not  know  the 
edition  of  1857  until  1864,  when  W.  M.  Rossetti 
procured  a  copy,  which  he  gave  him.^ 

The  facts  regarding  the  relations  of  these  two 
great  poets,  who  were  in  some  aspects  of  their 
genius  closely  allied  to  one  another,  have  hitherto 
been  extremely  obscure.  The  discovery  of  some 
papers  in  a  desk,  in  1912,  enables  me  to  record 

^This  copy  was  sold  for  £11 :10s.  in  June  1916,  when  it  formed  lot 
44  in  the  Catalogue  of  Swinburne's  Library.  The  Wagner  ef  Tannhduser 
a  Paris  of  1861  sold  for  £15  In  the  same  sale,  lot  40.  Those  seem  to  have 
been  the  only  works  by  Baudelaire  which  Swinburne  possessed  at  the  time 
of  his  death. 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  91 

what  little  there  is  to  tell.  Swinburne,  when  his 
article  appeared  in  the  Spectator,  sent  it,  with  a 
letter,  to  Baudelaire.  Of  this  letter  and  missive 
Baudelaire,  for  a  whole  year,  from  indolence 
or  failing  health,  made  no  acknowledgment  what- 
ever. Swinburne  expressed  surprise  to  Whistler, 
who  rallied  the  French  poet  on  his  discourtesy. 
Baudelaire  expressed,  in  reply,  "tout  mon  repentir 
de  mon  oubli  et  de  mon  apparent  ingratitude," 
but  still  could  not  shake  off  his  apathy  far  enough 
to  write  to  his  English  admirer.  At  last,  on  the 
10th  of  October  1863,  he  managed  to  write  a 
long  and  most  interesting  letter  to  Swinburne, 
which  he  entrusted  to  a  French  friend  who  was 
visiting  London;  this  the  friend  neglected  to 
deliver,  and  it  was  lately  found,  unopened,  in  a 
drawer  in  Paris.  It  is  a  great  pity  that  this 
communication  from  the  noble  poet  for  whom  he 
entertained,  and  continued  to  entertain,  so  exalted 
an  esteem,  never  reached  him,  since  the  words 
which  Baudelaire  uses  in  it  were  calculated  to 
give  Swinburne  acute  pleasure.  The  author  of 
Les  Fleurs  du  Mai  told  his  unknown  English 
reviewer,  "Je  n'aurais  jamais  cru  qu'un  littera- 
teur anglais  piit  si  bien  penetrer  la  beaute 
frangaise,  les  intentions  frangaises  et  la  prosodie 
frangaise." 

To  close  this  episode  a  little  prematurely, 
Baudelaire  presently  forwarded  to  Swinburne  his 
brochure  on  Wagner  and  Tannhauser  in  Paris, 
and  this  appears  to  have  been  the  only  com- 
munication Swinburne  ever  received  from  him. 
In  April  1867  Fantin-Latour  mentioned  the 
rumour  that  Baudelaire  was  dead,  and  Swinburne 


92     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

immediately  composed  his  grandiose  elogy,  "Ave 
atque  Vale,"  to  which  we  shall  return  in  due 
course.  Baudelaire,  however,  survived  until 
August  31st  of  that  year,  never  having  seen 
Poems  and  Ballads,  in  which  there  was  so  much 
that  would  have  appealed  to  his  peculiar  artistic 
temperament. 

The  anonymous  essays  contributed  to  the 
Spectator  of  1862  present  us  with  a  valuable 
opportunity  of  judging  Swinburne's  early  prose 
style.  We  find  it  strong  and  pure,  moving 
already  with  a  certain  formal  magnificence ;  it 
is  related  to  the  prose  of  Landor,  which  is  its 
obvious  model,  as  closely  as  Landor's  is  to  the 
movement  of  Cicero.  The  moderation  of  the 
stateliness  is  agreeable ;  there  is  as  yet  no  trace, 
or  hardly  a  trace,  of  the  faults  which  were  to 
invade  the  prose  of  Swinburne,  the  bluster  and 
the  strut,  the  wild  exaggeration  of  irony,  the  abuse 
of  alliteration  and  antithesis.  These  character- 
istics are  found,  however,  beginning  to  protrude 
themselves  in  the  letter  on  Meredith's  Poems, 
where  we  read  that  *'all  Muses  are  to  bow  down 
before  her  who  babbles,  with  lips  yet  warm  from 
their  pristine  pap,  after  the  dangling  delights  of  a 
child's  coral,  and  jingles  with  flaccid  fingers  one 
knows  not  whether  a  jester's  or  a  baby's  bells." 
This  is  the  structure  and  the  colour  which  we 
learn  to  dread,  for  with  Swinburne  as  a  prose- 
writer  suspecta  sunt  semper  ornamenta.  For  the 
time  being,  however,  and  under  the  editorial 
repression,  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  find 
in  England  at  that  moment  a  critic  more  learned, 
more   dignified,   or   more   graceful   than   the   un- 


EARLY  LIFE   IN  LONDON  93 

named  and  unknown  reviewer  of  Victor  Hugo 
and  Baudelaire. 

The  defence  of  George  Meredith  has  been 
mentioned.  That  writer,  already  valued  within  a 
very  narrow  circle  as  the  author  of  The  Ordeal 
of  Richard  Fever  el  and  Evan  Harrington  ^  had  been 
drawn,  by  a  vivid  sympathy  rather  than  by  com- 
plete conviction,  to  join  the  Pre-Raphaelites  in  the 
course  of  1861,  and  had  impressed  Swinburne  with 
his  power  of  character  and  depth  of  imagination. 
But  Meredith  was  not  the  elder  by  nine  years  for 
nothing,  and  he  was  not  so  implicitly  delighted 
by  Swinburne.  He  wrote  of  him:  "He  is  not 
subtle :  and  I  don't  see  any  internal  centre 
from  which  springs  anything  that  he  does.  He 
will  make  a  great  name,  but  whether  he  is  to 
distinguish  himself  solidly  as  an  artist,  I  would 
not  willingly  prognosticate."  In  this  dubious 
attitude,  Meredith  remained  during  the  rest  of 
his  life ;  in  fact,  why  should  it  be  concealed 
that  the  two  men  ultimately  "got  upon  the 
nerves"  of  each  other?  Nevertheless,  in  1862, 
they  still  had  much  in  common,  and  Swinburne 
was  a  frequent  visitor  at  Corsham,  while  Mere- 
dith had  his  own  room  in  Tudor  House. 

The  Spectator,  in  an  article  violently  unjust, 
"slated"  Meredith's  Modern  Love,  thus  provok- 
ing from  Swinburne  the  long,  generous,  and  rather 
redundant  "Letter  to  the  Editor,"  which  really 
amounted  to  a  second  review  of  the  book,  can- 
celling the  first.  It  is  very  interesting  to  note 
that  in  printing  this  defence  of  Meredith  (June 
7th,  1862),  the  editor  (doubtless  R.  H.  Hutton 
himself)    described   Swinburne,   whose   name,    let 


94  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

it  be  recalled,  had  been  appended  to  no  previous 
prose  production,  as  one  "whose  opinion  on  any 
poetical  question  should  be  worth  more  than 
most  men's." 

The  principal  adventures  in  Swinburne's 
career  were  the  electric  shocks  which  he  received 
by  running  up  against  masterpieces.  Early  in 
this  year  1862,  he  discovered,  through  the 
instrumentality  of  Rossetti,  and  in  circumstances 
which  he  himself  and  several  others  have  de- 
scribed, the  hidden  beauties  of  FitzGerald's 
Riibdiydt,  published  in  1859.  The  form  of  the 
Persian  quatrain  charmed  him,  and  led  almost 
immediately  (as  Meredith  picturesquely  described 
in  the  latest  public  letter  of  his  life)  to  the  com- 
position of  Laiis  Veneris.  This  was  the  most 
sustained  lyrical  poem  which  Swinburne  had  yet 
produced,  and  from  a  technical  point  of  view 
by  far  the  most  accomplished ;  and  it  is  interest- 
ing to  observe  that  while  it  is  in  no  sense  an 
imitation  of  Omar  Kliayyam,  but  on  the  contrary 
entirely  characteristic  of  Swinburne  himself,  it 
has  the  aura  of  the  Ruhdiydt  thrown  over  it 
like  a  transparent  tissue.  About  the  same  date, 
he  met  for  the  first  time  with  Leaves  of  Grass, 
lent  him,  I  believe,  by  George  How^ard  (after- 
wards the  ninth  earl  of  Carlisle),  to  whom  a  copy 
of  the  folio  of  1855  had  been  sent.  Whitman 
had,  up  to  that  time,  scarcely  been  heard  of  in 
England.  Swinburne  was  filled  with  enthusiasm, 
and  sent  over  to  America  for  a  copy  of  his  own, 
which  was  obtained  not  without  some  difficulty. 
This  he  ultimately  presented  to  his  friend  and 
physician.  Dr.  George  Bird,  when  he  had  secured 


EARLY  LIFE   IN  LONDON  95 

a  later  and  fuller  collection.  When  this  came 
he  wrote  to  Monckton  Milnes  (August  18th, 
1862) : 

Have  you  seen  the  latest  edition  of  Walt  Whitman's 
Leaves  of  Grass?  for  there  is  one  new  poem  in  it,  "A 
Voice  from  the  Sea,"  about  two  birds  on  the  sea-beach, 
which  I  really  think  is  the  most  lovely  and  wonderful 
thing  I  have  read  for  years  and  years.  I  could  rhap- 
sodise about  it  for  ten  more  pages,  for  there  is  such  beauti- 
ful skill  and  subtle  power  in  every  word  of  it,  but  I  spare 
you! 

This  may  be  set  against  the  ungracious  re- 
cantation of  later  years,  to  which  reference  will 
have  to  be  made. 

In  the  summer  of  1862  a  distinguished  party 
assembled  at  Fryston ;  it  included  Venables, 
James  Spedding,  the  newly-appointed  Archbishop 
of  York  (William  Thomson),  and  Thackeray,  the 
latter  having  brought  his  two  young  daughters, 
afterwards  Lady  Ritchie  and  Mrs.  Leslie  Stephen. 
Lady  Ritchie  recalls  for  me  that  the  Houghtons 
stimulated  the  curiosity  of  their  guests  by  describ- 
ing the  young  poet,  who  was  to  arrive  later.  She 
was  in  the  garden  on  the  afternoon  of  his  arrival, 
and  she  saw  him  advance  up  the  sloping  lawn, 
swinging  his  hat  in  his  hand,  and  letting  the  sun- 
shine flood  the  bush  of  his  red-gold  hair.  He 
looked  like  Apollo  or  a  fairy  prince ;  and  immedi- 
ately attracted  the  approval  of  Mr.  Thackeray 
by  the  wit  and  wisdom  of  his  conversation,  as 
much  as  that  of  the  two  young  ladies  by  his 
playfulness.  On  Sunday  evening,  after  dinner, 
he  was  asked  to  read  some  of  his  poems.     His 


96     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

choice  was  injudicious ;  he  is  beHeved  to  have 
recited  "The  Leper";  it  is  certain  that  he  read 
"Les  Noyades."  At  this  the  Archbishop  of  York 
made  so  shocked  a  face  that  Thackeray  smiled 
and  whispered  to  Lord  Houghton,  while  the  two 
young  ladies,  who  had  never  heard  such  senti- 
ments expressed  before,  giggled  aloud  in  their 
excitement.  Their  laughter  offended  the  poet, 
who,  however,  was  soothed  by  Lady  Houghton's 
tactfully  saying,  "Well,  Mr.  Swinburne,  if  you 
will  read  such  extraordinary  things,  you  must 
expect  us  to  laugh."  "Les  Noyades"  was  then 
proceeding  on  its  amazing  course,  and  the  Arch- 
bishop was  looking  more  and  more  horrified, 
when  suddenly  the  butler  —  "like  an  avenging 
angel,"  as  Lady  Ritchie  says  —  threw  open  the 
door  and  announced,  "Prayers  !   my  Lord  !" 

Lady  Ritchie  dwells  on  Swinburne's  "kind 
and  cordial  ways"  during  this  amusing  visit  to 
Fryston.  She  had  never  seen  anybody  so  dis- 
concerting or  so  charming,  and  when  Thackeray 
and  his  daughters  had  to  take  their  leave,  while 
Swinburne  remained  at  Fryston,  the  future 
author  of  The  Story  of  Elizabeth  burst  into  tears. 
The  friendship  so  begun  continued  until  the  day 
of  the  poet's  death,  though  they  met  rarely.  It  ^ 
appears  from  Lady  Ritchie's  recollection  that 
Thackeray  must  have  been  shown  some  of  Swin- 
burne's MS.  poems  by  Lord  Houghton,  for  he 
expressed  his  admiration  of  them.  He  died,'  as 
we  know,  a  few  months  later,  too  soon  to  see  any 
of  them  in  print,  except  those  which  were  printed 
in  the  Spectator  in  the  course  of  this  year, 
18G2. 


EARLY  LIFE   IN   LONDON  97 

With  the  end  of  the  year  there  unfortunately 
came  a  misunderstanding  with  the  Spectator, 
The  editor  was  beginning  to  take  alarm  at  the 
sans-culottism  of  his  brilliant  contributor.  A 
burlesque  review  of  an  imaginary  volume  of 
French  poetry  was  refused,  as  indeed  was  in- 
evitable. Swinburne  replied  that  "sanity  and 
decency  are  the  two  props  of  my  critical  faculty" 
and  that  the  principles  of  the  Spectator  offended 
his  moral  sense.  The  outraged  editor  involved 
himself  in  his  toga,  and  Master  Algernon  was 
invited  no  more  to  that  tea-party.  He  had, 
however,  tasted  printer's  ink,  and  enunciated  the 
very  reasonable  wish  that  "I  could  find  some 
paper  or  review  y^re  I  could  write  at  my  own 
times  and  in  my  own  way  occasional  studies  on 
matters  of  art  and  literature  of  which  I  could 
speak  confidently."  But  in  a  country  teeming 
with  penny-a-liners  there  was  apparently  no 
room  for  a  real  writer,  and  eight  years  more 
were  to  pass  before  an  editor  was  inspired  to 
invite  prose  contributions  from  Swinburne's  pen. 

In  the  spring  of  1862  Algernon  had  joined  his 
family  in  the  Pyrenees,  and  stayed  some  weeks 
at  Cauterets.  During  this  time  he  visited  the 
mysterious  lake  of  Gaube,  and  indulged  in  "the 
flight  of  his  limbs  through  the  still  strong  chill 
of  the  darkness  from  shore  to  shore,"  to  the  horror 
of  the  natives,  who  had  a  tradition  that  to  bathe 
in  Gaube  was  to  court  certain  death.  It  would 
be  difficult,  and  is  hot  needful  here,  to  follow  the 
young  poet  through  all  his  peregrinations  in  the 
year  1863.  Not  much  of  it  was  spent  in  London. 
He    was    paying    his    usual    Christmas    visit    to 


98  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Northumberland,  when  the  alarming  illness  of 
Edith,  his  second  sister,  called  him,  with  the 
rest  of  the  family,  to  Bournemouth.  She  rallied, 
and  in  February  her  brother  returned  to  London ; 
in  March  we  find  him  in  Paris,  writing  his  son- 
net called  "  Hermaphroditus  "  in  the  Louvre.  It 
was  on  this  occasion  that  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Fantin-Latour  and  began  a  cordial 
friendship  with  Whistler.  This  was  presently 
confirmed  by  Whistler's  return  to  England  and 
his  settlement  in  Chelsea,  where  Swinburne  im- 
mediately brought  him  into  relation  with  Rossetti. 
Whistler's  mother,  a  lady  of  noble  presence 
and  admirable  sweetness  of  character,  welcomed 
Algernon  at  her  house,  and  was  at  this  time  of 
great  practical  service  to  him.  Among  his  associ- 
ates was  now  the  painter  and  draughtsman, 
Frederick  Sandys,  who  was  familiar  with  both 
Rossetti  and  W^histler.  Swinburne  w^rote  some 
verses  called  Cleopatra  to  a  drawing  by  Frederick 
Sandys  which  appeared  as  a  wood-cut  in  the 
Cornhill  Magazine  in  September  1866,  and  as  late 
as  1868  he  defended  in  fiery  accents  Sandys' 
famous  picture  "Medea,"  which  had  been  rejected 
from  the  Royal  Academy  exhibition.  The  ac- 
quaintanceship soon  afterwards  lapsed. 

Considerable  anxiety  had  now  begun  to  be 
felt  about  Algernon's  health,  which  was  less  and 
less  satisfactory.  He  began  to  suffer  occasionally 
from  a  malady  which  seemed  to  be  exclusively 
brought  on  by  the  excitements  of  London  life. 
There  was  always,  I  believe,  a  difference  of 
opinion  among  the  doctors  as  to  the  actual  nature 
of  this  disease,  which  was,  however,  epileptiform. 


EARLY  LIFE  IN  LONDON  99 

It  took  the  shape  of  a  convulsive  fit,  in  which, 
generally  after  a  period  of  very  great  cerebral 
excitement,  he  would  suddenly  fall  unconscious. 
These  fits  were  excessively  distressing  to  witness, 
and  produced  a  shock  of  alarm,  all  the  more  acute 
because  of  the  deathlike  appearance  of  the  patient. 
Oddly  enough,  however,  the  person  who  seemed 
to  suffer  from  them  least  was  Swinburne  himself. 
The  only  real  danger  appeared  to  be  that  he  would 
hit  himself  in  his  fall,  which  indeed  he  repeatedly 
and  severely  did.  But  his  general  recovery  after 
these  fits  was  magical,  and  it  positively  struck 
one  —  if  it  is  not  absurd  to  say  so  —  that  he  was 
better  after  them,  as  after  a  storm  of  the  nerves. 
One  such  attack  came  on  in  Whistler's  studio, 
and  Mrs.  Whistler  nursed  the  patient  back  to 
health  with  tender  solicitude.  But  the  doctors 
represented  both  to  her  and  to  Rossetti,  who  had 
long  been  growing  anxious,  that  it  was  important 
for  Algernon  to  be  away  from  London  and  its 
agitations  as  much  as  possible.  He  had  now 
started  a  magnum  opus,  and  that  could  be  as 
successfully  conducted  in  the  country  as  in 
Tudor  House.  He  therefore  left  London,  practi- 
cally for  the  remainder  of  1863,  staying  first 
through  long  summer  weeks  at  Tintagel  with 
the  landscape-painter  J.  W.  Inchbold,  a  man 
of  serene  and  gentle  temper  peculiarly  suited  to 
calm  the  troubled  soul  of  the  over-agitated  poet. 
Here,  while  Inchbold  was  quietly  painting,  Swin- 
burne swam  in  the  Cornish  sea  or  galloped  on 
horseback  along  the  cliffs,  murmuring  verses 
which  were  beginning  to  take  choral  and  dramatic 
shape    and    to  foreshadow  Atalanta   in    Calydon. 


100  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

His  health  was  once  more  all  that  could  be 
desired.  Inchbold  and  he  lodged  and  boarded 
austerely  in  the  village  schoolhouse,  twenty-two 
miles  from  a  railway  and  six  from  the  nearest 
post-town,  Camelford.  From  Cornwall  in  October 
Swinburne  proceeded,  with  the  beginning  of 
Atalanta  in  his  pocket,  to  his  cousins  at  Niton  in 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  in  their  house  he  stayed 
until  February  1864,  when  his  great  drama  was 
completed  to  his  satisfaction. 

On  the  25th  of  September  1863,  Miss  Edith 
Swinburne  had  died,  and  the  rest  of  the  family 
left  East  Dene  for  a  long  tour  on  the  Continent, 
leaving  Algernon  with  his  cousins.  During  this 
visit  to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  he  was  engaged,  not 
merely  on  Atalanta  in  Calydon,  but  on  the  joint 
production,  with  his  cousin,  Miss  Mary  Gordon 
(afterwards  Mrs.  Disney  Leith),  of  an  anonymous 
story  called  The  Children  of  the  Chapel.  Miss 
Gordon  was  the  main  author,  but  Algernon 
made  suggestions  and  gave  endless  references 
and  information.  He  wrote,  moreover,  the  whole 
of  the  verses,  which  include  a  morality  play, 
called  The  Pilgrimage  of  Pleasure.  This  is  an 
astonishingly  brilliant  piece  of  pastiche,  repro- 
ducing the  versification,  language,  and  tone  of  the 
nondescript  Elizabethan  interludes  of  about  1575, 
with  an  art  which  probably  no  other  person  in 
England  could  have  equalled.  Nothing  could  be 
odder  than  to  find  a  work  of  such  learning  and 
elegance  unobtrusively  buried  in  an  anonymous 
story  for  children.  The  little  volume,  which  has 
now  become  extremely  scarce,  was  issued  by  an 
obscure  bookseller  in  the  City  in  1864. 


EARLY  LIFE   IN  LONDON  101 

Algernon  Swinburne  joined  his  family  in 
Italy  immediately  after  leaving  the  Isle  of 
Wight  in  the  February  of  that  year.  After  a 
short  stay  at  Genoa,  he  arrived  at  Florence 
early  in  March,  and  one  of  his  earliest  acts  was  to 
call  on  the  aged  Walter  Savage  Landor,  armed 
with  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Milnes  (who 
had  now  become  Lord  Houghton).  With  some 
difficulty  he  discovered  *'the  most  ancient  of 
the  demi-gods"  in  his  lodging  at  93  Via  della 
Chiesa,  but  the  visit  was  not  a  success.  Landor 
was  now  in  his  ninetieth  year,  and,  like  other 
very  old  men,  easily  bewildered.  The  unknown 
little  poet,  with  his  great  aureole  of  fluffed  red 
hair,  burst  into  his  presence  with  protestations 
of  worship,  and,  flinging  himself  on  both  knees 
before  the  old  man,  implored  his  blessing.  Landor 
was  so  feeble  and  deprecating,  so  perplexed  and 
uncomfortable,  that  Swinburne  withdrew  "in  a 
grievous  state  of  disappointment  and  depression," 
fearing  that  he  "was  really  too  late."  But, 
taking  heart  of  grace,  he  wrote  next  day  a  letter 
of  apology  and  explanation,  "expressing  (as  far 
as  was  expressible)  my  immense  admiration  and 
reverence  in  the  plainest  and  sincerest  way  I 
could  manage."  The  result  was  a  note  of  invita- 
tion which  Swinburne  answered  by  setting  out 
then  and  there  for  Landor's  lodging. 

This  second  excursion  was  crowned  with  com- 
plete success.  The  old  man  had  had  time  to 
recover  from  his  agitation  and  to  realise  the 
meaning  of  the  incident.  Swinburne  "found 
him  at  last,  brilliant  and  altogether  delicious  as 
I  suppose  others  may  have  found  him   twenty 


102    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

years    since."     As    he    was    to    write    when,    six 
months  later,  Landor  died : 

I  came  as  one  whose  thoughts  half  linger. 

Half  run  before ; 
The  youngest  to  the  oldest  singer 

That  England  bore. 

I  found  him  whom  I  shall  not  find 

Till  all  grief  end, 
In  holiest  age  our  mightiest  mind. 

Father  and  friend. 

In  a  letter  written  the  same  day  as  his  second 
visit  (March  4th,  1864)  Swinburne  tells  Lord 
Houghton : 

If  both  or  either  should  die  tomorrow,  at  least  today 
he  has  told  me  that  my  presence  has  made  him  happy; 
he  said  more  than  that  —  things  for  which  of  course  I 
take  no  credit  to  myself  but  which  are  not  the  less 
pleasant  to  hear  from  such  a  man.  There  is  no  other 
man  living  from  whom  I  should  so  much  have  prized 
any  expression  of  acceptance  or  goodwill  in  return  for 
my  homage,  for  all  other  men  as  great  are  so  much 
younger  that  in  his  case  one  sort  of  reverence  serves  as 
the  lining  for  another.  My  grandfather  was  upon  the 
whole  mienx  conserve,  but  he  had  written  no  "Hellenics." 
In  answer  to  something  that  Mr.  Landor  said  today 
of  his  own  age,  I  reminded  him  of  his  equals  and  pre- 
decessors, Sophocles  and  Titian;  he  said  he  should  not 
live  up  to  the  age  of  Sophocles,  not  see  ninety.  I  don't 
see  why  he  shouldn't,  if  he  has  people  about  him  to  care 
for  him  as  he  should  be  cared  for.  I  should  like  to  throw 
up  all  other  things  on  earth  and  devote  myself  to  playing 
valet  to  him  for  the  rest  of  his  days.  I  would  black  his 
boots  if  he  were  cliez  moi.  He  has  given  me  the  shock 
of  adoration  which  one  feels  at  thirteen  towards  great 
men. 


EARLY  LIFE   IN  LONDON  103 

Landor  talked  to  his  young  visitor  with  great 
freedom,  and,  in  relation  to  the  approach  of 
death  at  his  own  advanced  age,  remarked  that  he 
had  no  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  nor 
opinion  about  it,  but  "was  sure  of  one  thing, 
that  whatever  was  to  come  was  best  —  the  right 
thing,  or  the  thing  that  ought  to  come."  He 
was  delighted  with  Swinburne's  enthusiasm  for 
the  cause  of  Italian  freedom,  and  gave  him  several 
copies  of  his  unpublished  dialogue  in  Italian, 
Savonarola  e  II  Priore  de  San  Marco  (1860), 
which  the  Tuscan  Government  had  suppressed, 
"through  priestly  influence,"  as  the  author  told 
Swinburne.  He  referred  with  patient  scorn  to 
the  obloquy  and  insult,  "asses'  kicks  aimed  at 
his  head,"  which  reached  him  from  England, 
and  acknowledged  that  "the  sincere  tribute  of 
genuine  and  studious  admiration"  was  still 
gratifying  to  his  head  and  to  his  heart.  Before 
long,  the  aged  poet  addressed  Swinburne  as  his 
"dear  friend";  "let  me  now  and  ever  call  you 
so,"  he  said  with  pathetic  emphasis. 

When  the  interview  had  lasted  a  very  long 
time,  while  the  aged  poet  yielded  more  and  more 
completely  to  the  fascination  of  his  youthful 
visitor,  Landor  said,  impressively,  "Sir,  this 
meeting  must  be  commemorated.  I  hereby  pre- 
sent to  you  that  Correggio  hanging  on  the  wall. 
It  is  a  masterpiece  that  was  intercepted  on  its  way 
back  to  its  Florentine  home  from  the  Louvre, 
whither  it  had  been  taken  by  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte." Swinburne  protested  that  he  needed 
no  such  form  of  memorial.  The  interview,  with- 
out any  such  aid,  would  be  indelibly  fixed  upon 


104    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

his  memory.  But  this  did  not  suit  his  imperious 
host.  After  Landor  had  insisted  time  after  time, 
and  time  after  time  Swinburne  had  refused  to 
deprive  him  of  the  treasure,  Landor  rose,  and 
turning  purple  with  anger,  shouted,  "By  God, 
sir,  you  shall!"  So  Swinburne  said  no  more, 
and  the  picture  was  sent  to  his  hotel.  He 
brought  it  back  to  England,  but  it  was  a  worthless 
daub,  one  of  the  strange  artistic  delusions  of 
Landor's  extreme  old  age.  What  became  of  it 
seems  to  be  unknown ;  Correggio  or  no  Correggio, 
it  would  have  an  amusing  association  with  two 
eminent  and  wilful  persons. 

Swinburne  stayed  some  weeks  in  Florence, 
where  he  visited  pictures  in  the  delightful  com- 
pany of  Mrs.  Gaskell.  Long  afterwards  he  told 
me  that  she  was  the  only  person  who  sympathised 
with  his  raptures  over  the  '* Medusa"  of  Leonardo 
da  Vinci :  unfortunately  the  cruel  art-critics 
now  will  have  it  that  this  panel  was  never 
touched  by  Leonardo.  Of  the  drawings  in  the 
Uffizi  he  made  a  close  study,  and  his  notes  were 
long  valuable  in  the  absence  of  any  other  cata- 
logue or  manual.  He  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Mr.  Seymour  Kirkup  (1788-1880),  "the  saviour 
of  Giotto,  the  redeemer  of  Dante,"  with  whom 
Swinburne  enjoyed  long  conversations  about 
Blake,  whom  Kirkup  had  known  intimately,  and 
about  Keats,  at  whose  funeral  he  had  taken  part. 
He  paid  a  visit  to  Fiesole,  where,  deafened  by 
noonday  nightingales  in  a  high-walled  garden, 
he  recorded  that  he  wrote  Itylus}  He  passed 
on    to    Siena,    which    made    upon   him   a   deeper 

'  But  Ruskin  is  said  to  have  possessed  a  MS.  of  Itylus  dated  1863. 


EARLY   LIFE   IN   LONDON  105 

impression  than  any  other  ItaUan  city,  "lady 
loveHest  of  my  loves,"  a  city  to  be  the  subject 
of  one  of  the  noblest  of  all  his  poems.  Whether 
he  saw  much  more  of  Landor  is  not  remembered, 
but  before  finally  leaving  Florence  he  dedicated 
to  the  aged  poet  a  sonnet  which  is  here  for  the 
first  time  published : 

The  stateliest  singing  mouth  that  speaks  our  tongue. 

The  lordhest,  and  the  brow  of  loftiest  leaf 

Worn  after  the  great  fashion  close  and  brief, 
Sounds  and  shines  yet ;   to  whom  all  braids  belong 
Of  plaited  laurel  that  no  weathers  wrong, 

All  increase  of  the  spring  and  of  the  sheaf, 

All  high  delight  and  godliness  of  grief. 
All  bloom  and  fume  of  summer  and  of  song. 
The  years  are  of  his  household ;  Fate  and  Fame 

Observe  him ;   and  the  things  of  pestilence 
Die  out  of  fear,  that  could  not  die  of  shame, 

Before  his  heel  be  set  on  their  offence  : 
Time's  hand  shall  hoard  the  gold  of  such  a  name 

When  Death  has  blown  the  dust  of  base  men  thence. 

Returning  in  the  autumn  of  1864  to  London, 
Swinburne  joined  his  friends  at  Tudor  House 
for  a  while.  But  the  importance  of  this  arrange- 
ment has  been  exaggerated  in  legend.  His 
tenancy  lasted  but  two  years,  during  which 
time  his  absence  much  exceeded  his  residence. 
The  Pre-Raphaelites  had  not  been  well  advised 
in  sharing  their  domestic  bliss ;  there  were 
too  many  plums  in  their  pudding.  Swinburne 
and  George  Meredith  developed,  in  particular, 
a  remarkable  incompatibility  of  temper.  They 
parted,  rarely  to  meet  again  until  1898,  when,  on 
occasion  of  Meredith's  seventieth  birthday,  there 
was    a    reconciliation    by    letter,    and    Swinburne 


106    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

accepted  an  invitation  to  Box  Hill.  Rossetti 
himself,  though  no  misunderstanding  obscured 
his  almost  parental  affection  for  "my  little 
Northumbrian  friend,"  found  Swinburne  a  tem- 
pestuous inmate.  I  heard  him  say  long  after- 
wards, in  reference  to  this  time,  "Algernon  used 
to  drive  me  crazy  by  dancing  all  over  the  studio 
like  a  wild  cat."  The  whole  situation  has  been 
described  to  me  as  "pandemonium."  Swinburne 
was  often  a  prey  to  fits  of  ungovernable  fury. 
More  than  once  the  decorative  artist,  John 
Hungerford  Pollen  (1820-1902),  was  called  in 
from  his  house  in  Pembridge  Crescent  "by  his 
self-contained  gentleness  to  allay  the  storm." 

Swinburne  found  lodgings  at  124  Mount  Street, 
over  a  court  milliner's,  moving  later  to  22a 
Dorset  Street,  which  was  his  London  home  for 
four  or  five  years.  He  spent  another  autumn 
in  Cornwall,  staying  with  Jowett  at  Kynance 
Cove  and  at  St.  Michael's  Mount.  Here  he 
finished,  doubtless  with  the  help  of  Jowett's 
revision,  the  long  dedication  in  Greek  of  Atalanta 
in  Calydon  to  Walter  Savage  Landor :  "Never 
any  more  shall  I  sit  beside  thee,  touching  thy  pure 
hands  with  awe,"  he  says  in  it,  and  he  delivers 
the  body  of  his  sacred  friend,  fallen  by  the 
Etruscan  wave,  to  the  tender  care  of  the  Pierides, 
and  of  the  dancing  Muses,  and  of  Aphrodite,  who 
delighted  in  the  austere  beauty  of  his  songs. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ATALANTA  IN  CALYDON.   CHASTELARD 

At  the  beginning  of  1865  the  printing  of  Atalanta 
in  Calydon  was  completed,  but  there  followed  a 
long  delay  in  connection  with  the  binding,  which 
D.  G.  Rossetti  had  designed.  Bertram  Payne, 
who  was  now  responsible  for  the  firm  of  Moxon, 
believed  that  the  only  hope  of  success  which 
the  poem  offered  lay  in  the  beauty  of  its  appear- 
ance, and  accordingly  no  pains  were  spared  to 
adorn  the  ivory-white  sides  of  the  buckram  cover 
with  mystic  golden  spheres.  A  limited  number 
of  copies,  it  is  said  one  hundred,  were  manu- 
factured, and  the  drama  was  at  length  issued 
towards  the  end  of  April,  with  no  anticipations 
on  the  publisher's  part.  But  much  had  changed 
since  the  fiasco  of  1860.  Algernon  Swinburne 
was  no  longer  perfectly  unknown ;  he  was  the 
object  of  curiosity  in  a  small  but  very  active 
circle,  and  already  the  legend  of  his  superhuman 
cleverness  and  superdiabolic  audacity  had  spread 
beyond  the  limit  of  his  acquaintances.  More- 
over, Algernon  had  now  a  powerful  friend,  who 
was  determined  that  the  catastrophe  of  The 
Queen    Mother    should    not    be    repeated.     Lord 

107 


108    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Houghton,  in  the  common  phrase,  *'knew  every- 
body," and  was  an  indefatigable  wire-puller. 
He  set  his  heart  on  making  Atalanta  the 
principal  literary  sensation  of  1865,  and  it 
was. 

Conditions  of  taste  had  altered  in  the  five 
years  since  Swinburne  made  his  first  vain 
appeal  to  the  public.  The  intentions  of  the 
Pre-Raphaelites,  both  in  painting  and  poetry, 
were  no  longer  entirely  unintelligible  or  held 
worthy  of  mere  angry  ridicule.  Where  Morris, 
Swinburne,  and  Meredith  had  failed  to  penetrate 
the  Philistine  fortress,  Christina  Rossetti  in  her 
Goblin  Market  (1862)  had  succeeded.  Ruskin 
had  grown  to  be  a  recognised  authority,  and 
he  brought  the  Pre-Raphaelites  in  his  wake ;  he 
was  known  to  have  an  almost  extravagant 
admiration  of  the  new  poet.  Matthew  Arnold's 
lectures  at  Oxford  had  caused  a  wide  awakening ; 
people  who  had  thought  it  crafty  to  extinguish 
each  glimmering  taper  that  made  itself  apparent 
were  now  anxious  to  look  out  for  new  poets  and 
to  court  unparalleled  sensations.  There  was  a 
widespread  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of  Tenny- 
son, whose  Enoch  Arden  (1864)  had  seemed  to 
many  hitherto  dutiful  worshippers  an  intoler- 
able concession  to  commonplace  ideals.  Robert 
Browning,  after  a  long  period  of  silence,  had 
spoken  again  in  a  volume  which  showed  him  to 
be  in  full  sympathy  with  revolutionary  methods 
of  style.  Atalanta,  "the  pure  among  women," 
arrived  in  Paternoster  Row  at  a  moment  as 
auspicious  as  that  in  which  her  prototype  walked 
over  lowland  and  lawn  from  Arcadia  to  Calydon 


ATALANTA   IN  CALYDON  109 

northward.  The  reviewers  were  practically 
unanimous,  and  Swinburne  shot  like  a  rocket 
into  celebrity. 

Of  all  Swinburne's  works,  Atalanta  in  Calydon 
has  remained  the  best  known  and  most  enjoyed 
by  the  ordinary  reader.  The  lyrical  passages 
are  abundant,  and  they  are  well  adapted  to 
display  the  startling  originalities  of  the  poet's 
metre  in  their  most  pleasing  shape.  The  legend 
is  clear  and  romantic,  of  a  great  simplicity, 
and  yet  full  of  the  elements  of  passion.  The 
recitative  is  composed  in  blank  verse,  which  is 
astonishing  in  its  lucidity  and  dignity  and  music. 
The  morality  was  objected  to  as  defective  by 
some  reviewers,  but  merely  in  connection  with 
the  attitude  of  the  poet  towards  the  gods  and 
divine  influences  in  general,  to  a  consideration 
of  which  we  shall  presently  return.  But  the 
refinement  of  the  sentiments  and  the  dignity 
of  the  language  attributed  to  the  characters 
were  of  the  most  admirable  kind,  and  the  poet 
evidently  aimed  in  this  respect  at  a  rivalry  with 
the  sacred  enthusiasm  of  Aeschylus  and  the 
serene  elevation  of  Sophocles. 

There  had  not  been  written  since  the  Prometheus 
Unbound  of  Shelley  a  drama  on  the  model  of 
Greek  antiquity  which  could  be  compared  with 
the  new  play.  We  must  go  to  more  recent 
experiments  in  French  drama,  as,  for  example, 
to  the  remarkable  tragedies  of  Moreas,  to  find 
anything  comparable  with  Atalanta  in  Calydon. 
The  choral  plays  of  Milton,  even,  have  little  in 
common  with  the  achievements  of  the  early 
Greeks,    and    their    sublime    imagery    and    their 


110    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

moral  splendour  are  remote,  in  form  at  least, 
from  the  aims  and  outlines  of  Hellenic  tragedy 
which  Swinburne,  with  extreme  adroitness,  con- 
trived to  capture.  His  knowledge  of  the  text 
of  Aeschylus  was  extraordinarily  close  and  sym- 
pathetic. His  marvellous  memory  enabled  him 
to  carry  practically  the  whole  of  the  Oresteia 
in  his  mind,  and  there  are  those  still  living  who 
recollect,  as  an  astonishing  feat,  his  ability  to 
"spout"  the  plays  of  Aeschylus  in  Greek  as  long 
as  any  auditor  had  the  patience  to  listen  to  him. 

His*  scholarship,  as  we  are  told  by  those 
best  qualified  to  judge  —  and  Jowett  is  said  to 
have  been  of  this  number  —  was  not  exact  in 
the  grammatical  sense;  he  was  no  Scaliger  or 
Bentley.  But  it  sufficed  to  enable  him,  with 
intense  gusto,  to  enjoy  and  to  retain  the  beauties 
of  the  poets,  to  understand  their  work  from  the 
inner  point  of  view.  He  was  able  to  speak  of 
Shelley,  whose  feeling  for  Greek  verse  he  admitted 
to  have  been  delicate  in  the  extreme,  as  one 
whose  ''scholarship  was  yet  that  of  a  clever  but 
idle  boy  in  the  upper  forms  of  a  public  school.'* 
Critics  have  sometimes  spoken  of  Swinburne  as 
though  his  own  knowledge  of  Greek  was  of  the  same 
kind,  but  this  is  certainly  a  mistake.  Thirlwall, 
as  we  shall  see,  did  his  Landorian  elegiacs  justice, 
and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Swinburne's 
mind  and  memory  were  more  deeply  immersed 
i  in  the  poetry  of  the  ancients  than  that  of  any 
other  English  poet,  more  than  that  of  Milton, 
or  even  of  Landor.  Moreover,  we  must  not  forget 
to  observe  the  excellent  economy  which  Swinburne 
reintroduced   into  this  order  of  writing  by   the 


ATALANTA   IN  CALYDON 

carefully  balanced  form  of  Atalanta.  It  was  a 
protest  against  the  shapelessness  of  the  "spas- 
modical" types  of  lyrical  but  essentially  un- 
theatrical  drama,  such  as  were  much  admired 
at  that  time,  though  forgotten  now.  We  speak 
not  of  Arnold's  admirable  Empedocles;  but  some 
of  us  still  recall  Swinburne's  attitude  towards 
Alexander  Smith's  Life  Drama,  Sydney  Dobell's 
Balder,  and  the  whole  set  of  rhapsodical  wotks 
of  which  they  were  the  type.  We  know  how 
resolutely  and  designedly  he  set  his  face  against 
their  excesses. 

Swinburne  adopted  for  his  great  choral  drama 
one  of  the  most  romantic  stories  of  late  Homeric 
Greece,  and  one  which  seems  to  have  stimulated 
with  peculiar  freshness  and  purity  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  ancients.  When  Pausanias  was  in 
Arcadia  he  visited  the  city  of  Tegea,  and  found 
there  a  temple  which  far  excelled  all  its  fellows 
in  the  Peloponnesus,  whether  for  size  or  beauty. 
This  was  the  fane  of  Athena  Alea,  built  in  the 
highest  style  of  late  magnificence  by  Scopas 
the  Parian,  who  introduced  into  it  all  the  orders 
of  architecture,  and  produced  a  gorgeous  structure 
in  which  Doric,  Corinthian,  and  Ionic  were  com- 
bined in  harmony.  On  the  front  gable,  in  the 
centre  of  the  whole  composition,  he  presented 
the  Hunt  of  the  Boar  of  Calydon,  and  there  were 
to  be  seen  in  effigy  the  " snowy-souled "  Atalanta; 
Meleager,  type  of  the  robust  hunter  of  the  woods ; 
and  the  evil  brethren  of  Qiieen  Althaea.  Pau- 
sanias does  not  describe  the  arrangement  of  the 
group,  but  we  cannot  doubt  that  the  moment 
chosen  by  the  sculptor  was  that  when,  after  the 


112    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

death  of  the  boar,  Meleager  pushed  the  brothers 
aside  and 

With  great  hands  grasping  all  that  weight  of  hair 
Cast  down  the  dead  heap  clanging  and  collapsed 
At  female  feet,  saying,  This  thy  spoil,  not  mine, 
Maiden,  thine  owti  hand  for  thyself  hath  reaped, 
And  all  this  praise  God  gives  thee, 

since  the  incident  was  the  one  which  the  sanctuary 
most  mysteriously  venerated,  while  the  very  tusks 
of  the  boar  itself,  held  to  be  the  sacred  treasure 
of  Athena  Alea,  were  preserved  within  until 
Augustus  impiously  carried  them  away  to  Rome. 
^^/  /  It  is  almost  certain  that  Ovid  —  of  whom 
j^^  I  Swinburne  never  speaks,  so  far  as  I  remember, 
^  I  with  approval  —  has  no  right  to  be  considered 
'■"^^  \  responsible  for  Atalanta  in  Calydon.  The  courtly 
^  sweetness  and  scented  grace  of  Ovid  were  particu- 
larly what  the  young  English  poet  did  not  wish 
to  reproduce  in  his  study  of  austere  and  archaic 
ritual.  But  it  can  but  be  interesting  to  compare 
the  elaborate  version  of  the  story,  as  we  get  it  in 
the  eighth  book  of  the  Metamorphoses y  with  Swin- 
burne's plot.  We  must  not  overlook  the  fact 
that  Ovid  adds  very  much  which  Homer,  in  the 
ninth  Iliad,  omits  or  gives  more  vaguely,  nor  that 
the  English  poet  accepts  the  general  Ovidian 
outline  of  the  story.  The  paramount  influence 
of  Althaea,  as  the  tool  of  the  gods  in  their 
sinister  revenge,  is  as  much  emphasised  in  one 
poem  as  in  the  other,  although  Swinburne,  with 
superior  art,  introduces  Althaea  to  us  on  the  very 
threshold  of  his  drama,  while  Ovid  forgets  to 
mention  her  existence  until  after  the  death  of 
Plexippus    and    Toxeus.       But    when    she    does 


ATALANTA   IN  CALYDON  113 

appear  in  the  Metamorphoses,  the  role  she  fills 
is  just  as  effective  as  that  of  the  Swinburnian 
Althaea.  It  may  be  remarked  that  Ovid  dedicates 
one  of  his  finest  passages  of  purely  descriptive 
verse  to  the  lair  of  the  Calydonian  monster. 
The  English  poet's  picture  of  the  scene  of  the 
flaying  of  the  Boar  seems  to  have  been  written 
in  direct  competition  with  this,  and  fine  as  is 
Ovid's  description  of  the  ozier-beds  and  the 
hollows  of  the  rain-sodden  brushwood,  still  finer 
is  the  English  poet's  picture  of  the  place  where 

.  .  .  much  sweet  grass  grew  higher  than  grew  the  reed. 

And  good  for  slumber,  and  every  holier  herb, 

Narcissus,  and  the  low-lying  melilote, 

And  all  of  goodliest  blade  and  bloom  that  springs 

Where,  hid  by  heavier  hyacinth,  violet  buds 

Blossom  and  burn ;   and  fire  of  yellower  flowers 

And  light  of  crescent  lilies,  and  such  leaves 

As  fear  the  Faun's  and  know  the  Dryad's  foot ; 

Onve  and  ivy  and  poplar  dedicate. 

And  many  a  well-spring  over- watched  of  these. 

One  great  and  obvious  improvement  Swin- 
burne makes,  while  otherwise  keeping  very  close 
to  the  outlines  of  the  old  tale.  In  the  Greek 
versions  Meleager  has  a  wife,  named  Cleopatra, 
who  attends  his  last  moments  as  his  spirit  is 
passing  out  of  the  smouldering  brand.  The 
presence  of  this  lady,  who  was  ultimately  trans- 
formed into  a  kingfisher,  would  have  been  a  most 
incongruous  element  in  that  last  magnificent 
chorus  round  the  dying  hero.  Swinburne  ejected 
Cleopatra  from  his  scheme,  and  Meleager  is  the 
wild  hunter  of  the  woods,  who  has  never  stooped 
to  the  lure  of  woman  till  he  is  smitten  by  the 
eyes  and  hair  of  Atalanta. 


114  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

To  this  drama  were  prefixed  the  two  pieces 
of  elegiac  Greek  verse  addressed  to  Landor. 
Over  these  Swinburne  had  taken  very  great  pains. 
When  Lord  Houghton  was  preparing  to  review 
the  poem  for  the  Edinburgh  Review,  Swinburne 
was  afraid  that  these  Greek  compositions  might 
escape  attention,  as  Houghton  made  no  pretence 
to  being  an  expert.  At  the  poet's  suggestion, 
Houghton  appHed  to  Connop  Thirlwall,  Bishop 
of  St.  David's,  for  an  opinion.  The  Bishop  read 
Atalanta,  and  came  to  dinner  with  Lord  Houghton 
to  talk  it  over,  expressing  himself  in  the  mean- 
time as  follows.  No  more  interesting  proof  of 
the  effect  Swinburne  produced  on  the  learned 
world  of  letters  in  1865  could  be  adduced  than  is 
contained  in  this  private  letter  from  the  famous 
author  of  the  History  of  Greece: 

The  Greek  verses  are  ...  of  a  very  high  order  of 
merit,  and  both  in  their  strength  and  weakness  worthy 
of  the  poem  itself,  as  here  and  there  they  seem  to  reflect 
some  of  the  peculiarities  of  its  diction,  though  there  are 
also  a  few  lines  which  I  believe  for  other  reasons  a  Greek 
would  not  have  written.  I  should  like  to  know  a  little 
about  the  author.  He  must  be  a  young  man,  but  it 
would  be  psychically  interesting  to  ascertain  until  what 
time  of  life  such  a  man  can  continue  to  regard  Landor 
as  by  far  the  greatest  of  all  poets.  ...  I  am  still  more 
curious  to  know  to  what  kind  of  reactionary  school  the 
author  belongs.  Somehow  I  cannot  fancy  him  to  be  a 
stiff  Churchman  or  an  obscurantist  Romanist;  still  less 
as  an  intolerant  Puritan;  and  yet  he  takes  the  side  of 
the  old,  now  pretty  nearly  antiquated,  orthodoxy  which 
thought  itself  in  peril  if  it  admitted  that  there  was  any- 
thing good  and  holy,  or  in  fact,  not  diabolical,  in  the  Pagan 
religion. 


AT  ALAN  T  A   IN  CALYDON  115 

This  was  a  charge  calculated  to  surprise  the 
poet,  but  Thirlwall  supported  it  on  the  ground 
that  the  austere  sentiment  is  not 

.  .  .  put  in  the  mouth  of  one  of  the  characters  in  the  drama, 
where  it  might  simply  have  heightened  the  tragic  effect; 
but  is  enunciated  by  the  chorus,  and  therefore  must  be 
the  poet's  last  word  and  his  way  of  expressing  the  na- 
tional sentiment.  Both  as  a  Philhellene  and  as  a  liberal 
theologian  I  repudiate  this  imputation.  Even  from  the 
purely  poetical  point  of  view  it  seems  to  me  a  mistake. 
The  tragic  action,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is  not  brought  out  in 
stronger  relief,  but  rather  effaced  by  the  intense  unbroken 
murkiness  of  the  background. 

Our  answer  to  the  Bishop's  acute  criticism 
must  be  that  to  Swinburne  the  real  tragic  action 
lay  not  around  the  slaying  of  the  Boar  and  the 
evaporation  of  Meleager,  but  precisely  in  the 
struggle  with  theological  tyranny  which  drives 
his  chorus  to  lift  its  voices  in  despair  and  revolt. 
No  doubt  this  was  an  idea  which  would,  as  Thirl- 
wall said,  have  made  Aeschylus  stare  and 
Sophocles  shudder,  bu±_JEuripidesmight  surely 
have  entertained  it.  After  much  consideration 
Thirlwall  wrote  on  the  Greek  elegiacs  two  para- 
graphs, which  Houghton  incorporated  in  his 
review.  It  must  have  given  Swinburne  intense 
gratification  to  be  told,  by  so  eminent  a  Grecian, 
that  his  thoughts  moved  "with  scarcely  less  ease 
and  freedom  in  the  language  and  measures  of  Calli- 
nus  and  Mimnermus  than  in  his  native  speech." 
It  was  a  salve  to  the  sore  wound  which  stung 
the  persistent  undergraduate  of  Balliol  whenever 
he  thought  of  his  inglorious  exit  from  Oxford. 

The  attitude  towards  theology,  which  Thirlwall 


116    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

so  strangely  misunderstood,  and  which  F.  D. 
Maurice  and  others  strenuously  deprecated,  was 
part  of  that  revolt  against  the  traditions  of  official 
religion  which  had  immediately  followed  Swin- 
burne's abrupt  rejection  of  Anglicanism  when 
he  was  at  Oxford.  It  is  not  to  be  overlooked 
that  he  had  a  mind  which  had  passed  through 
the  discipline  of  a  training  that  was  rigorously 
devout.  He  differed  from  those  pagans  of  in- 
different heart,  who  have  never  known,  and  do 
not  care  to  comprehend,  the  faith  of  the  fervent 
Catholic  or  Puritan.  Swinburne  was  deeply  in- 
structed in  the  text  and  teaching  of  the  Bible, 
and  it  is  noticeable  that  there  is  a  distinct  strain 
of  the  religious  controversialist  running  through 
his  poems.  It  is  true  that  it  expresses  itself 
in  antagonism,  but  it  is  violently  there ;  the 
poet  is  not  a  lotus-eater  who  has  never  known 
the  Gospel,  but  an  evangelist  turned  inside  out. 

(^  In  the  great  choruses  and  tirades  of  Atalanta 
the  absolute  negation  of  free  will  is  progressively 
insisted  upon.  We  have  the  lugubrious  and 
melodious  expression  of  a  fatalism  that  far  sur- 
passes that  of  Aeschylus,  and  is  completely 
Oriental.  Blind  chance,  an  impersonal  moira 
against  which  the  gods  themselves  contend  in 
vain,  tosses  the  faint  human  creature,  as  a  wave 
tosses  a  breaking  bubble.  There  is  no  equity,  no 
foresight,  no  method  in  the  fate  of  mortals,  for 

.  .  .  the  Gods  love  not  justice  more  than  fate. 
And  smite  the  righteous  and  the  violent  mouth. 
And  mix  with  insolent  blood  the  reverent  man's. 
And  bruise  the  holier  as  the  lying  lips. 

There  is  some  confusion  about  this  inexorable 


ATALANTA   IN   CALYDON  117 

destiny,  which  is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  above 
the  gods,  and  sometimes  as  being  God  itself. 
But  the  only  independence  that  Man  can  prove, 
the  only  dignity  that  he  can  show,  is,  during  the 
brief  interval  between  birth  and  death,  to  live 
according  to  the  guidance  of  the  inward  light, 
and  defy  the  moira.  But  the  singing  huntsmen 
do  not  conceal  from  themselves  the  hopelessness 
of  the  struggle  and  the  darkness  at  the  end  of 
the  vista,  and  they  turn,  in  the  most  majestic 
of  their  choruses,  with  the  exultation  of  a  vain 
defiance,  to  shake  their  fists  against  the  un- 
regarding  Power : 

Because  thou  art  cruel  and  men  are  piteous, 

And  our  hands  labour  and  thine  hand  scattereth ; 
Lo,  with  hearts  rent  and  knees  made  tremulous, 
Lo,  with  ephemeral  lips  and  casual  breath. 
At  least  we  witness  of  thee  ere  we  die 
That  these  things  are  not  otherwise,  but  thus ; 
That  each  man  in  his  heart  sigheth,  and  saith. 
That  all  men  even  as  I, 
All  we  are  against  thee,  against  thee,  O  God  most  high ! 

It  was  fresh  from  the  emotion  of  listening 
to  these  vociferous  lamentations  that  Ruskin 
wrote  to  a  friend:  "Have  you  read  Atalanta? 
The  grandest  thing  ever  done  by  a  youth,  — 
though  he  is  a  Demoniac  youth!" 

In  Atalanta  in  Calydon  a  new  poetic  voice 
was  heard  in  England,  a  voice  so  full  and  pure 
and  vibrating  that  no  one  could  for  a  moment 
question  its  importance.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no 
one  did  question  it;  what  was  remarkable  was 
the  unanimity  with  which  the  young  and  the  old, 
the  critics  and  the  public,  vied  in  welcoming  a 
poet  more  supple  and  palpitating  than  any  other 


118    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

who  had  appeared  since  Shelley.  Swinburne 
was  compared  at  once  with  that  unrivalled  master, 
but  he  could  endure  the  comparison,  since,  if 
the  new  methods  were  less  ethereal  than  the  old 
ones,  they  were  richer  and  more  vehement. 
Nothing  so  swift  had  been  heard  in  English 
poetry  before  as  sounded  in  the  almost  super- 
human choruses  of  Atalanta.  It  may  be  well 
to  remind  ourselves  of  what  the  most  learned  of 
our  prosodists,  then  an  undergraduate  at  Oxford, 
has  recorded  of  the  effect  of  these  bounding  and 
doubling  "verse-hounds."     Saintsbury  says: 

Every  weapon  and  every  sleight  of  the  EngHsh  poet  — 
equivalence  and  substitution,  alternative  and  repetition, 
rhymes  and  rhymeless  suspension  of  sound,  volley  and 
check  of  verse,  stanza  construction,  Une-  and  pause- 
moulding,  foot-conjunction  and  contrast,  —  this  poet 
knows  and  can  use  them  all.  The  triple  rhyme  itself,  that 
springe  for  the  unwary,  gives  him  no  difficulty. 

There  are  many  lovers  of  poetry  to-day  who 
would  confess  that  their  apprenticeship  to  the 
mysteries  of  such  melody  as  lies  hidden  in  the 
woven  texture  of  English  speech  began  in  their 
appreciation  of  "When  tii3  hounds  of  spring/' 
and  "Who  hath  given  man  speech,"  and  "Be- 
hold thou  art  over  fair,  thou  art  over  wise,"  or 
perhaps  most  of  all  the  inestimable  recitative 
around  the  dying  body  of  Meleager,  with  its 
violin-like,  wailing  harmonies : 

For  the  dead  man  no  home  is ; 

Ah,  better  to  be 
What  the  flower  of  the  foam  is 
In  fields  of  the  sea, 
That  the  sea-waves  might  be  as  my  raiment,  the  gulf-stream 
a  garment  for  me. 


ATALANTA   IN  CALYDON  119 

Who  shall  seek  thee  and  bring 

And  restore  thee  thy  day. 
When  the  dove  dipt  her  wing 
And  the  oars  won  their  way, 
Where  the  narrowing  Symplegades  whitened  the  straits  of 
Propontis  with  spray  ? 

These  gave  promise  of  magnificent  music, 
which  was  not  belied  by  the  freshness  of  Poems 
and  Ballads  or  by  the  maturity  of  Songs  before 
Sunrise. 

The  season  of  1865  was  made  very  pleasant 
to  the  young  poet  by  the  fame  which  attended 
his  success.  He  went  out  a  good  deal  into  society, 
and  stayed  longer  in  town  than  he  was  accustomed 
to  do.  His  friends  were  again  made  a  little 
anxious  by  his  racketing,  and  wished  to  get 
him  down  into  the  country.  To  some  mild 
reproaches  from  Lord  Houghton,  Swinburne  re- 
plied that  he  should  soon  "be  again  cultivating 
the  calmer  virtues  at  Holm  Wood."  This  was 
a  house  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Henley-on- 
Thames,  which  Admiral  Swinburne  had  now 
decided  to  take,  in  the  place  of  the  old  home  in 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  which  was  now  given  up. 
Holmwood  was  a  comfortable  but  not  pretentious 
country-house,  which  the  Admiral  leased  from 
the  executors  of  Maria  Josepha,  Lady  Stanley 
of  Alderley,  Gibbon's  friend,  whose  southern 
residence  it  had  been. 

In  the  summer,  the  French  painter,  C.  F. 
Daubigny,  came  over  to  London,  on  the  invita- 
tion of  Leighton,  at  whose  house,  it  is  possible, 
Swinburne  met  him  first.  At  all  events,  an 
acquaintance  sprang  up  between  them,  and  the 


120  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

English  poet  was  gratified  by  the  sympathy  of  the 
French  painter.  Eminent  foreign  artists  were  not 
at  that  date  frequently  welcomed  to  this  country, 
and  Daubigny's  visit  was  something  of  a  sensa- 
tion. "He  expressed  himself  much  taken  with 
my  French  songs,  which  were  shown  to  him  by  a 
friend  to  whom  I  had  lent  them."  These  were  the 
lyrics  in  Chastelard,  which  now  (July  1865)  was 
going  through  the  press,  together  with  a  second 
edition  of  Atalanta  in  Calydon.  The  latter  was  to 
have  been  adorned  by  an  etched  portrait  of  Swin- 
burne by  Whistler,  but  this  was  not  forthcoming. 
On  one  of  his  visits  to  his  publisher,  Algernon 
met  an  old  man  who,  now  that  Landor  had  died, 
was  the  last  survivor  of  the  poets  born  before 
the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century.  This  was 
Bryan  Waller  Procter,  now  in  his  78th  year; 
as  "Barry  Cornwall"  and  author  of  songs  and 
"dramatic  scenes,"  he  had  been  almost  famous 
in  the  age  of  Keats  and  Hunt.  His  daughter, 
Adelaide  Ann,  had  achieved  still  greater  popu- 
larity before  her  death  the  preceding  year. 
Swinburne  *'got  on  with  him,  as  I  always  do 
with  old  men  —  another  of  my  Spartan  virtues. 
Mr.  Procter  was  charming  et  me  disait  choses 
ravissantes,  but  mourned  over  the  hard  work  of 
seven  hours  a  day  at  his  Life  of  Charles 
Lamb,"  a  biography  which  appeared  in  1866. 
The  old  poet  was  not  less  charmed  with  Algernon, 
who  was  soon  introduced  to  the  wonderful  Mrs. 
Procter,  "Our  Lady  of  Bitterness,"  becoming 
a  frequent  visitor  to  them  both  until  Procter's 
infirmities  closed  the  house  to  company.  When 
"Barry    Cornwall"    died,    in    1874,    Swinburne 


ATALANTA   IN  CALYDON  121 

paid  to  his  memory  the  respect  of  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  of  all  his  elegies. 

In  the  late  summer  of  1865,  Swinburne  spent  a 
pleasant  holiday  with  Lord  Houghton  at  Fryston, 
and  said  farewell  for  the  time  being  to  a  friend 
who  occupied  a  large  part  in  his  acquaintance,  and 
has  not  yet  been  mentioned.  This  was  Richard 
Burton,  to  whom,  on  his  return  from  his  consulate 
at  Fernando  Po,  Algernon  had  been  presented 
by  Lord  Houghton.  These  two  men,  externally 
so  dissimilar,  had  taken  an  instant  fancy  to  one 
another.  Burton,  who  was  by  sixteen  years 
Swinburne's  senior,  was  a  personage  of  virile 
adventure,  the  hero  of  mysterious  exploits  in 
Asia  and  in  Africa;  he  was  Al-Haj  Abdullah, 
the  enchanted  pilgrim  who  had  penetrated  to  the 
holy  city  of  Mecca.  He  represented  in  action 
everything  of  which  Swinburne  had  only  dreamed. 
But,  on  his  side,  Burton  possessed  a  passionate 
love  of  literature,  in  which  he  was  doomed  by  a 
radical  inaptitude  of  style  never  to  excel,  and  he 
recognised,  without  envy,  but  with  the  most 
generous  enthusiasm,  those  gifts  which  he  vainly 
desired  for  himself  exhibited  to  an  almost  super- 
human degree  by  his  sedentary  associate. 

Accordingly,  between  these  two  men  there 
grew  up  a  strong  friendship,  which  lasted  for  the 
rest  of  Burton's  life.  They  met  frequently  at  the 
house  of  Dr.  George  Bird,  from  which  Burton 
had  been  married  in  1861.  The  Arundells,  Mrs. 
Burton's  parents,  were  strict  Catholics,  and 
while  they  treated  Swinburne  affectionately,  they 
were  occasionally  shocked  by  his  diatribes.  One 
night,   at   Dr.   Bird's   house   in   Welbeck   Street, 


122  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

after  some  extravagant  rodomontade  of  Swin- 
burne's, Mr.  Arundell  felt  obliged  to  intervene 
*' Young  Sir,"  he  said,  in  a  very  solemn  tone, 
"if  you  talk  like  that,  you  will  die  like  a  dog!" 
*'0h!"  replied  Algernon,  clasping  his  hands 
together,  "don't  say  'like  a  dog'  —  do  say  *like 
a  cat!'"  Swinburne's  relations  with  Richard 
Burton  at  this  time  were  charming;  the  two 
had  so  much  to  say  to  one  another,  and  so  many 
stories  to  tell,  and  jokes  to  exchange,  that  they 
used  to  be  good-naturedly  allowed  to  sit  by 
themselves  in  an  inner  room,  from  which  the  rest 
of  the  company  would  be  tantalised  to  hear 
proceeding  roars  and  shrieks  of  laughter,  followed 
by  earnest  rapid  talk  of  a  quieter  description. 

Association  with  Burton  was,  however,  not 
good  for  Swinburne,  intellectually  or  physically. 
Burton,  a  giant  of  endurance,  and  possessed  at 
times  with  a  kind  of  dionysiac  frenzy,  was  no 
fortunate  company  for  a  nervous  and  yet  spirited 
man  like  Swinburne.  Houghton,  observing  with 
anxiety  a  situation  which  he  had  created,  rejoiced 
when  Burton  received  a  new  consular  appoint- 
ment that  took  him  to  South  America.  Swin- 
burne, in  response  to  warnings,  wrote:  "As  my 
tempter  and  favourite  audience  has  gone  to 
Santos,  I  may  hope  to  be  a  good  boy  again.  I 
may  have  shaken  the  thyrsus  in  your  face. 
But  after  this  half  I  mean  to  be  no  end  good." 
The  long  visit  to  Fryston  freshened  him,  and  then, 
after  a  short  stay  in  town,  through  the  feverish 
heat  of  August,  while  Chastelard  was  going  through 
the  press,  he  descended  upon  his  family  in  Oxford- 
shire, and   "all,"   as  he  used  to  say,   was  once 


ATALANTA   IN  CALYDON  123 

more  "joy  and  peace  and  love."  The  antithesis 
between  London  and  the  country,  between  the 
"roses  and  raptures"  and  the  "Hlies  and  lan- 
guors," was  now  absolutely  complete;  and  those 
who  merely  saw  him,  shaking  the  thyrsus,  in 
Dorset  Street  could  not  recognise  as  the  same 
person  the  discreet  and  sober  student  who  shep- 
herded his  fancies  at  Holmwood. 

At  this  time  Swinburne  became  intimate  with 
Joseph  Knight  (1829-1907),  who  was  introduced 
to  him  by  Purnell.  Knight's  great  love  of 
poetry,  and  in  particular  his  extraordinary  know- 
ledge of  dramatic  literature,  made  him  a  sym- 
pathetic companion,  and  his  fine  appearance  and 
courtesy  of  manner  were  very  attractive.  He 
was  then  living  as  a  journalist,  and  mainly 
writing  for  the  Literary  Gazette;  it  was  Knight 
who  introduced  Swinburne  to  Mr.  John  Morley, 
and  in  several  other  ways  was  serviceable  to 
him. 

In  a  letter  to  E.  C.  Stedman  (February  20th, 
1875)  Swinburne  wrote:  '" Atalanta  was  begun 
the  very  day  after  I  had  given  the  last  touch  to 
Chastelard.*'  This  statement,  categorical  as  it 
is,  must  not  be  taken  too  literally.  What  it 
means,  no  doubt,  is  that  in  the  autumn  of  1863, 
feeling  that  the  images  and  cadences  of  Atalanta 
were  crowding  on  his  imagination,  he  pulled  the 
scenes  of  Chastelard  together,  to  get  them  off  his 
mind.  But  quite  late  in  1865  we  find  him  still 
modifying  and  interpolating  passages  in  that 
drama,  which  had  been  more  or  less  continuously 
on  the  stocks  ever  since  he  was  at  Balliol  in  1858. 
It  is  difficult  to  realise,  in  face  of  the  smoothness 


1-24  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

and  simplicity  of  Chastelard,  that  it  took  seven 
years  to  compose  it  to  its  author's  liking.  This 
was  the  earliest  of  the  numerous  studies  of  the 
character  and  life  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  which 
he  was  to  produce  in  prose  and  verse.  Those 
clear  eyes  of  "a  swordblade's  blue,"  which  moved 
so  many  hearts  to  madness  at  the  close  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  reigned  like  stars  in  the  firma- 
ment of  Swinburne's  imagination.  Mary  Stuart 
was  the  only  figure  in  pure  history  to  which  he 
ever  gave  minute  attention,  but  his  study  of  her 
character  and  adventures  was  so  close  and  so 
clairvoyant  that  it  has  received  the  grudging 
praise  of  professional  historians,  who  are  never 
ready  to  believe  that  poets  can  know  anything 
definite  about  history. 

In  this  case,  the  young  poet's  worship  of 
the  memory  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  was  no 
new  or  light  emotion.  Like  almost  every  one 
of  the  deepest  and  most  durable  of  Swinburne's 
infatuations,  it  began  in  his  boyhood.  The 
romance  which  hung  about  the  history  of  his 
Border  ancestors  extended  to  the  legend  that 
Thomas  Swinburne  of  Capheaton  had  taken 
arms  for  the  defence  of  Mary  Stuart  somewhere 
between  Lochleven  and  Langside,  and  had  suc- 
cumbed to  the  irresistible  charm  of  her  presence. 
A  boyish  excursion  to  the  fortalice  in  Roxburgh- 
shire, which  is  celebrated  as  the  scene  of  Mary's 
dashing  visit  to  the  wounded  Both  well,  was  the 
occasion  upon  which  the  chivalrous  imagination 
of  Algernon  was  enslaved  for  ever.  In  the 
admirable  "Adieux  a  Marie  Stuart,"  which  he 
wrote  at  least  thirty  years  later,  he  said,  looking 


CHASTELARD  125 

back  to  this  enchanting  day  on  the  banks  of  the 
Water  of  Hermitage : 

There  beats  no  heart  on  either  border 
Wherethrough  the  north  blasts  blow 

But  keeps  your  memory  as  a  warder 
His  beacon-fire  aglow. 

Long  since  it  fired  with  love  and  wonder 

Mine,  for  whose  April  age 
Blithe  midsummer  made  banquet  under 

The  shade  of  Hermitage. 

The  character  of  Mary,  however,  offered  some 
of  the  most  puzzling  and  elusive  problems  which 
can  attend  the  attempt  to  resuscitate  any  histori- 
cal figure.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Swin- 
burne's early  reflections  upon  it  were  tinctured 
with  a  juvenile  romanticism  which  his  continued 
studies  obliged  him  more  and  more  to  modify. 
This,  almost  beyond  question,  was  the  reason  of 
his  slow  progress,  and  continued  dissatisfaction, 
with  the  portrait  of  her  which  he  now  reluctantly 
published  in  Chastelard,  and  it  is  known  that  in 
later  years  he  did  not  consider  it  to  be  so  success- 
ful as  those  which  he  afterwards  produced  in 
Bothwell  and  in  Mary  Stuart.  He  was  fascinated 
early  by  the  evidence  of  her  high  spirit,  her  ready 
wit  and  her  victorious  charm,  but  it  was  not 
until  he  had  given  prolonged  meditation  to  the 
documents  which  have  been  preserved  from  that 
confused  and  tumultuous  age  that  he  clearly 
perceived  the  qualities  which  he  summed  up  at 
last  (in  1882)  as  her  "easiness,  gullibility,  in- 
curable innocence  and  invincible  ignorance  of 
evil,   incapacity   to   suspect  or   resent   anything. 


126  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

readiness  to  believe  and  forgive  all  things.'* 
Moreover,  even  in  1865,  much  was  still  neglected, 
much  superficially  observed,  in  the  records  them- 
selves, and  Swinburne  had  had  no  opportunity 
of  considering  the  investigations  of  later  students 
of  Mary's  reign.  The  figure  of  Mary  in  Chastelard, 
therefore,  must  be  looked  upon  as  a  brilliant 
sketch,  marvellously  fresh  and  bright,  but  super- 
ficial in  all  its  principal  lines,  and  marred  by 
the  inexperience  of  the  young  historian. 

The  central  figure  of  his  drama,  moreover,  was 
not  so  much  Mary  Stuart  as  it  was  the  young 
poet  whose  infatuation  so  deeply  compromised 
her,  and  who  expiated  his  error  on  the  scaffold. 
So  little  was  he  known  to  the  reading  public  of 
1865  that  some  of  the  reviewers  supposed  him 
to  be  entirely,  or  mainly,  an  invention.  But  in 
point  of  fact,  Swinburne  kept  very  closely  to 
the  contemporary  narratives  in  his  portrait, 
introducing,  as  tesserae  in  his  mosaic,  a  great 
many  minute  features  which  may  easily  escape 
the  notice  of  a  reader.  Pierre  de  Boscozel  de 
Chastelard  was  as  truly  a  conventional  specimen 
of  his  age  as  Mary  was  an  exceptional  one.  He 
represented  to  perfection  the  Italianated  elegance 
and  irresponsible  paganism  of  the  French  Re- 
naissance as  it  flourished  in  the  reigns  of  the  later 
Valois.  He  was  like  a  personage  in  some  voluptu- 
ous and  high-flown  tragedy  of  Quinault.  Born  in 
Dauphine  in  1540,  he  was  by  two  years  Mary's 
senior ;  he  wore  the  romantic  halo  of  being  a 
grandnephew  of  the  Chevalier  Bayard,  but  though 
without  fear,  he  took  no  pains  to  be  without 
reproach.     He   had    been    attached,    as    a    page, 


CHASTELARD  127 

to  the  household  of  the  Montmorencys,  and  thus 
obtained  entrance  to  the  court  of  Frangois  II., 
where  he  met  Mary.  He  became,  in  the  Hght  of 
those  times,  a  man  of  "good  sword  and  good 
Hterature." 

Considerable  intimacy  seems  to  have  already 
existed  between  them  when,  in  1561,  the  Queen 
sailed  northward  to  assume  her  Scottish  throne. 
Brantome  and  Chastelard  were  prominent  mem- 
bers of  her  escort,  and  the  former  records,  with 
admiration,  that  when  the  ship  arrived  at  the 
port  of  Leith  (which  they  called  Petit  Lict)  in 
the  dark,  Chastelard  exclaimed  that  there  was 
no  need  to  light  lanterns  or  flare  torches  because 
*'les  beaux  yeux  de  ceste  Reyne  sont  assez 
esclairans  et  bastans  pour  esclairer  de  leur 
beaux  feux  toute  la  mer,  voire  I'embrazer  pour 
un  besoing."  The  whole  of  Chastelard,  the 
whole  of  what  he  represented,  is  revealed  in  this 
feverish,  gallant  and  preposterous  exclamation. 
Sent  back  to  France  with  the  rest  of  the  escort, 
his  presumptuous  passion  so  inflamed  the  poet 
that  in  November  1562  he  slipped  back  to  Scot- 
land, and  committed  those  acts  of  indelicate 
imprudence  which  led  to  his  execution  on  the 
21st  of  February  1563.  On  the  scaffold  he 
carried  with  him  —  a  characteristic  detail  which 
Swinburne  omits  —  Ronsard's  poems  instead  of 
a  testament,  and  read  one  of  them  with  ostenta- 
tion. He  murmured  *'0  cruelle  Dame!  Marie!" 
as  the  blow  fell.  Brantome  adds  the  delightful 
comment  that  Chastelard  suffered  death  *'par 
son  outrecuidance  et  non  pour  crime."  His 
verses,  which  seem  to  have  been  all  addressed. 


128    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

with  naive  effrontery,  to  the  Queen,  are  lost,  except 
a  piece  which  closes  thus  : 

Ces  buissons  et  ces  arbres 

Qui  sont  autour  de  moy, 
Ces  rochers  et  ces  marbres 

Sgavent  bien  mon  esmoy ; 
Bref,  rien  de  la  nature 
N'ignore  la  blessure, 
Fors  seulement 
Toy,  qui  prends  nourriture 

En  mon  cruel  tourment. 

These  lines  are  genuine,  but  the  beautiful 
lyrics  in  French,  which  adorn  several  scenes  of 
Chastelard,  and  are  there  attributed  to  him,  are 
entirely  the  work  of  Swinburne.  They  repro- 
duce the  manner  of  the  latest  imitators  of  the 
Pleiade  with  extraordinary  fidelity,  and  are  among 
the  most  amazing  tours-de-force  of  Swinburne's 
assimilative  genius.  We  may  doubt  whether 
any  of  Chastelard's  actual  verse  was  of  so  high 
a  level  in  poetry  as  "Le  navire  est  a  I'eau,"  or 
*'J'ai  vu  faner  bien  des  choses." 

Swinburne  did  not  confine  himself  to  Bran- 
tome's  account,  but  consulted  The  History  of  the 
Reformation  in  Scotland  (1584)  by  John  Knox, 
who  says  that  "Amongis  the  monzeonis  of  the 
Court,  Monsieur  Chattelett"  surpassed  all  others 
in  credit  with  the  Queen.  Knox  closes  his 
account  of  the  execution  by  saying,  *'And  so 
received  Chattelett  the  reward  of  his  dansing, 
for  he  lacked  his  head,  that  his  toung  should  not 
utter  the  secreattis  of  our  Quene."  Professor 
Hume  Brown  points  out  to  me  that  Knox  deals 
very  gently  with  the  fault  of  "poor  Chattelett," 


CHASTELARD  129 

doubtless  because  he  was  of  Huguenot  upbringing. 
His  tone  about  a  licentious  Papist  would  have 
been  very  different. 

The  dramatic  movement  of  Chastelard  and  its 
curious  facility  of  style  make  it  unique  in  the 
poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  has  not 
the  weight  of  Bothwell  nor  the  ethical  intensity 
of  Erechtheus,  but  as  a  piece  of  literature  for  the 
study  it  has  the  extraordinary  merits  of  speed 
and  lightness.  There  are  no  heavy  passages, 
or  very  few,  and  it  proceeds  on  its  flowery  and 
fatal  course  without  interruption.  Of  all  Swin- 
burne's dramas  it  is  the  easiest  to  read,  the  most 
amusing,  the  most  lucid.  Nevertheless,  it  has 
never  been  favoured  by  the  critics,  nor  much 
appreciated  by  the  public.  The  reason  is  prob- 
ably to  be  found  in  its  attitude  towards  life  and 
morals.  It  is  well  known  that  it  was  objected 
to  from  the  first  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
*' immoral"  in  tendency,  and  this  charge  was 
brought  against  it  not  in  consequence  of  any 
coarseness  in  the  language,  but  because  the 
wliole  tonejof  it  was  out  of  sympathy  with  the 

sentimental    conception    of love    that    prevailed 

ijT_th^-J-pgh''='h  Hfprqt"!'*^  of  its  time.  The  reading 
public  was  satisfied  with  the  way  in  which  Tenny- 
son, particularly  in  the  Idylls  of  the  King,  treated 
the  emotions  in  the  rude  stories  of  a  mythical 
antiquity  which  he  rehearsed,  and  as  it  were 
adapted,  for  a  strictly  modern  use.  His  Elaines 
and  Enids  were  conventional  women  of  the  reign 
of  Victoria,  travestied  against  a  romantic  back- 
ground of  semi-barbarous  romance,  but  preserving 
all  their  latter-day  prejudices. 


130  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Swinburne,  on  the  other  hand,  having  selected 
for  his  background  the  strange  mixture  of  refine- 
ment and  brutahty  which  characterised  Franco- 
Scottish  court-Hfe  in  the  sixteenth  centurv, 
determined  to  present  his  characters  as  faithfully 
as  he  dared,  without  any  concession  to  senti- 
mentality. AVe  have  seen,  and  shall  have  occasion 
to  see  again,  that  his  imagination  w^as  always 
swinging,  like  a  pendulum,  between  the  north 
and  the  south,  between  Paganism  and  Puritan- 
ism, between  resignation  to  the  instincts  and 
an  ascetic  repudiation  of  their  authority.  With 
him,  to  an  unceasing  extent,  the  influences  of 
childhood  were  ever  present,  and  he  saw  existence 
in  terms,  now  of  the  grim  moors  and  stern  summits 
of  the  Cheviot  Hills,  now  of  the  rich  gardens  of 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  glimmering  southward  down 
to  burnished  seas  of  summer.  In  Chastelard  a 
little  group  of  delicate  exotic  W'Omen,  rustling 
in  their  bright  emptiness  like  so  many  dragon- 
flies,  are  presented  to  us  caged  in  a  world  of 
violent  savages  and  scarcely  less  acrid  ascetics. 
Swinburne  w^as  profoundly  read  in  the  pages  of 
Brantome  and  Knox,  in  the  amorous  novels  of 
the  French  and  the  minatory  sermons  of  the 
Scottish  preachers.  He  was  as  much  at  home  in 
the  meadows  of  the  Pays  du  Tendre  as  in  the  dark 
and  perilous  roads  that  led  away  from  Holyrood, 
and  was  not  less  familiar  with  The  Blast  of  the 
Trumpet  against  the  Monstrous  Regiment  of  Women 
than  with  the  divagations  of  Desportes  in  Les 
Amours  d'llippolyte. 

Having  it,  therefore,  upon  his  dramatic  con- 
science to  present  lovers  not  as  seen  in  Trollope 


CHASTELARD  131 

and  Patmore,  or  even  in  George  Eliot  and 
Browning,  but  in  a  condition  of  entire  relaxation 
to  the  "precious"  ideal  of  the  French  sixteenth 
century,  Swinburne  created  a  figure  which  shocked 
the  British  public  of  1865,  and  has  been  unsym- 
pathetic to  it  since.  In  Chastelard,  to  use  th^ 
well-known  phrase  of  Corneille,  love  is  not  the 
"ornament,"  as  it  is  in  most  English  plays,  but 
the  "body"  of  the  tragedy.  All  relates  to  it, 
all  else  is  molten  in  the  breath  of  it;  all  senti- 
ments, all  responsibilities,  all  ties  of  religion  and  / 
patriotism  and  duty  wither  where  it  blows. 

Readers  were  offended  with  the  hero  in  Swin- 
burne's third  act,  because  his  attitude  to  life 
was  totally  foreign  to  a  generation  which  had 
pastured  on  The  Angel  in  the  House;  but  perhaps 
the  most  salient  lines  in  the  whole  play  are  those 
in  which  the  infatuated  Chastelard  says  to  the 
Queen,  in  the  act  of  behaving  to  her  in  a  manner 
which  we  justly  regard  as  abominable  and  dis- 
honourable : 

No,  by  God's  body ; 
You  will  not  see  ?  how  shall  I  make  you  see  ? 
Look,  it  may  be  love  was  a  sort  of  curse 
Made  for  my  plague  and  mixed  up  with  my  days 
Somewise  in  their  beginning ;   or  indeed 
A  bitter  birth  begotten  of  sad  stars 
At  mine  own  body's  birth,  that  heaven  might  make 
My  lip  taste  sljarp  where  other  men  drank  sweet ; 
But  whether  in  heavy  body  or  broken  soul, 
I  know  it  must  go  on  to  be  my  death. 
There  was  the  matter  of  my  fate  in  me 
When  I  was  fashioned  first,  and  given  such  life 
As  goes  with  a  sad  end ;  no  fault  but  God's. 
Yea,  and  for  all  this  I  am  not  penitent. 

This    was    the    exact    morality    of    those    who 


132    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

dwelt  in  Tendre-sur-Inclination,  and  worshipped 
Love  as  an  insatiable  Moloch,  "a  sort  of  curse 
made  for  man's  plague."  And,  as  Brantome 
says  in  his  wonderful  account  of  Chastelard*s 
execution,  which  Swinburne  must  have  deeply 
studied,  *'c'est  la  fin  de  I'histoire." 


CHAPTER  V 

POEMS  AND  BALLADS 

(1866) 

The  success  of  Chastelard,  following  upon  the 
still  more  brilliant  success  of  Atalanta,  encouraged 
Algernon's  friends  to  press  for  the  publication  of 
his  miscellaneous  lyrics.  Not  a  few  among  his 
associates  had  long  believed  that,  interesting  and 
eloquent  as  his  dramas  might  be,  it  was  his  songs 
and  ballads  and  odes  that  really  placed  him,  as 
they  contended,  on  the  very  topmost  peak  of 
Parnassus.  There  were  remarkable  scenes  in  the 
early  'sixties ;  Swinburne  in  the  studio  of  some 
painter-friend,  quivering  with  passion  as  he 
recited  "Itylus"  or  "Felise"  or  "Dolores"  to  a 
semicircle  of  worshippers,  who  were  thrilled  by  the 
performance  to  the  inmost  fibre  of  their  beings. 
It  used  to  be  told  that  at  the  close  of  one  such 
recital  the  auditors  were  found  to  have  slipped 
unconsciously  to  their  knees.  The  Pre-Raphael- 
ite ladies,  in  particular,  were  often  excessively 
moved  on  these  occasions,  and  once,  at  least, 
a  crown  of  laurel,  deftly  flung  by  a  fair  hand, 
lighted  harmoniously  upon  the  effulgent  curls 
of  the  poet.  Rossetti  looked  askance  at  these 
private  rites  of  deification,  and  was  anxious  that 

133 


134     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

the  poems  should  come  forth  to  brave  the  battle 
and  the  breeze.  But  neither  he  nor  any  one  else 
foresaw  how  fiercely  the  breeze  would  blow,  and 
how  long  the  battle  would  last. 

As  we  read  Poems  and  Ballads  to-day,  it 
is  difficult  to  reconstruct  the  social  order  into 
which  they  intruded  like  a  bomb-shell.  So  far 
as  could  be  perceived  at  the  time,  the  'sixties 
formed  the  most  quiescent,  the  most  sedate, 
perhaps,  we  might  even  without  offence  continue, 
the  least  effective  and  efficient  period  in  our 
national  poetry.  That  this  was  only  apparent, 
and  that  to  us,  looking  back  over  half  a  century, 
it  is  now  seen  to  be  prodigiously  effective  and 
active  in  the  forces  that  were  developing,  does  not 
militate  against  what  has  just  been  said.  The 
Dedication  of  the  Idylls  of  the  King  in  1862,  Enoch 
Arden  and  Aylmers  Field  in  1864,  were  typical 
of  a  certain  tendency,  encouraged  by  social 
prejudice,  which  was  deplorable  in  its  effect  upon 
public  taste,  however  gracefully  and  even  fault- 
lessly exercised  by  Tennyson  himself  in  certain 
instances.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  super- 
ficiality, the  element  of  conventionality  and  time- 
serving which  invaded  that,  poet's  temperament 
at  this  moment  —  dust  to  be  flung  from  his  wings 
with  admirable  vigour  at  a  later  period  —  that 
this  smooth  blandness  was  terribly  welcome  to 
the  mid-Victorian  reading  public,  and  that  the 
favour  which  Philistia  showed  to  it  almost  com- 
pletely silenced  every  voice  that  uttered  a  whisper 
of  revolt. 

Tennyson,  therefore,  the  starched  and  em- 
broidered Tennyson  of  the  Idylls,  held  the  field 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  135 

of  poetry  all  to  himself,  imperially  resigning 
a  corner  here  or  there  to  a  devoted  disciple  like 
Jean  Ingelow.  But  over  every  other  poetical 
voice  depression  and  silence  had  fallen.  Robert 
Browning,  rebuffed  and  rejected,  yet  not  dis- 
couraged, was  concentrating  himself  on  the  long 
labour  of  writing  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 
Matthew  Arnold,  though  with  Thy  r  sis  in 
his  portfolio,  had  long  contented  himself  with 
prose  in  his  addresses  to  the  public.  { Philistia 
semed  to  have  prevailed ;  it  was  the  epoch  of 
the  crinoline  and  the  pointed  shawl,  when  not 
merely  could  a  spade  never  be  called  a  spade  in 
the  most  restricted  circles,  but  the  existence  of 
that  or  any  other  such  domestic  utensil  was 
strenuously  denied^ 

It  is  violent  and  unjust  to  sweep  away,  as 
some  petulant  youthful  critics  are  nowadays 
apt  to  do,  the  value  of  Tennyson's  idyllic 
work.  Take  even  the  baldest  portions  of  it, 
take  the  sentimental  story  of  "Dora,"  and  the 
skill  of  the  verse,  the  lucidity  and  directness  of 
the  narrative  command  respect.  But  the  in- 
fluence of  it  all  was  deadening,  and  we  see  the 
unquestioned  genius  of  Tennyson  in  1862  acting 
as  a  upas  tree  in  English  poetry,  a  wide-spread- 
ing and  highly  popular  growth  beneath  whose 
branches  true  imagination  withered  away.  Pro- 
priety had  prevailed ;  and,  once  more  to  change 
our  image,  British  poetry  had  become  a  beauti- 
fully guarded  park,  in  which,  over  smoothly 
shaven  lawns,  where  gentle  herds  of  fallow-deer 
were  grazing,  thrushes  sang  very  discreetly  from 
the  boughs  of  ancestral  trees,  and   where   there 


136  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

was  not  a  single  object  to  be  seen  or  heard  which 
could  offer  the  very  smallest  discomfort  to  the 
feelings  of  the  most  refined  mid-Victorian  gentle- 
woman. Into  this  quiet  park,  to  the  infinite 
alarm  of  the  fallow-deer,  a  young  Bacchus  was 
now  preparing  to  burst,  in  the  company  of  a 
troop  of  Maenads,  and  to  the  accompaniment  of 
cymbals  and  clattering  kettle-drums. 

At  the  close  of  1865  the  position  of  affairs 
was  this.  The  Pre-Raphaelites,  duly  announced 
by  Ruskin  fifteen  years  earlier,  had  gradually 
forced  themselves  upon  the  acceptance  of  a 
limited  circle  of  artists  and  lovers  of  art.  In  the 
person  of  Millais,  who  had  something  of  the 
character  of  Tennyson,  they  had  even  captured 
the  stronghold  of  the  Royal  Academy.  But 
the  very  titles  of  the  pictures  with  which  Millais 
was  winning  the  plaudits  of  the  public  —  in  1865 
they  were  "My  Second  Sermon"  and  "Charlie 
is  my  Darling"  —  were  enough  to  show  what 
concessions  he  was  prepared  to  make.  Those 
who  made  no  concessions  —  D.  G.  Rossetti, 
Edward  Burne-Jones,  Whistler,  for  example  — 
arrived  at  no  visible  progress  towards  popularity, 
and  were  misunderstood,  ridiculed,  and  eschewed 
by  the  critics.  But  in  poetry  it  had  until  quite 
lately  been  even  worse.  Meredith's  first  attempt 
in  1851,  and  his  second  in  1862,  W.  Morris's  in 
1858,  Swinburne's  own  in  1860,  D.  G.  Rossetti's 
in  1861,  had  been  absolute  failures;  the  new 
poetry  seemed  to  have  achieved  no  progress  in 
the  eye  of  the  public  since  the  experiment  of 
The  Germ  in  1850.  Then  at  last  came  Christina 
Rossetti   with   her   brilliant,   fantastic,   and   pro- 


POEMS  AND  BALLADS  137 

foundly  original  volume  of  Goblin  Market  in  1862, 
and  achieved  the  earliest  popular  success  for 
Pre-Raphaelite  poetry.  Swinburne  never  failed 
to  recognise  the  priority  of  Christina ;  he  used  to 
call  her  the  Jael  who  led  their  host  to  victory. 

But  neither  in  Goblin  Market  nor  in  Modern 
Love  was  anything  to  be  found  that  could  be 
charged  with  disturbing  those  proprieties  which 
had  now  practically  slumbered  in  English  litera- 
ture since  the  publication  of  Don  Juan.  Here 
might  be  a  treatment  of  versification,  of  natural 
scenery,  even  of  character  which  was  unfamiliar 
and  therefore  blameworthy,  but  there  was  nothing 
or  next  to  nothing  which  could  mantle  the  cheek 
of  innocence  with  a  blush.  The  friends  of 
Algernon  Swinburne  were  amply  aware  that,  so 
far  from  avoiding  all  possibilities  of  offence  in  this 
direction,  he  was  prepared  to  turn  the  pudic 
snows  of  Mrs.  Grundy's  countenance  to  scarlet, 
and  they  had  observed  a  certain  impish  gusto 
in  his  anticipation  of  so  doing.  He  was  even 
impatient  to  invade  the  Respectabilities  in  their 
woodbine  bower,  and  to  make  their  flesh  creep 
while  he  did  so.  In  comparison  with  the  crudities 
and  the  audacities  which  are  nowadays  poured 
out  upon  our  indifference,  the  particular  mutinies 
of  Swinburne's  lyrics  may  appear  to  be  mild 
and  almost  anodyne.  But  the  age  was  not 
accustomed  to  expressions  of  sensuous  or  of 
heterodox  opinion.  It  had  never  had  presented 
to  it,  even  *'on  grey  paper  with  blunt  type," 
anything  which  bore  the  least  resemblance  to 
*'Anactoria"  or  "The  Leper." 

At  the  close  of   1865,   then.  Lord  Houghton, 


138  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

who  took  the  most  amiable  and  enthusiastic 
interest  in  the  affairs  of  his  young  friend,  laid 
himself  out  to  prepare  the  way  for  a  volume  of 
lyrics.  He  suggested  that  the  MSS.  should  be 
submitted  to  several  people  of  importance, 
with  reference  to  the  possibility  that  the  poems 
might  create  a  dangerous  scandal.  Accordingly 
the  opinions  of  Ruskin,  and  perhaps  of  F.  T. 
Palgrave,  to  whom  Houghton  now  introduced 
Swinburne,  were  invited. 

On  the  8th  of  December  1865  Ruskin  called 
at  22  Dorset  Street  and  spent  a  long  evening 
alone  with  the  poet,  who  read  him  "a  great  part 
of  my  forthcoming  volume  of  poems,  selected 
with  a  view  to  secure  his  advice  as  to  publication 
and  the  verdict  of  the  world."  Ruskin  expressed 
an  enthusiastic  admiration  and  approval,  and 
accepted  Swinburne's  paganism  "with  frank- 
ness." Lady  Trevelyan  also  indicated  approval. 
Rossetti,  Burne-Jones,  Burton,  and  Whistler, 
none  of  whom  could  be  considered,  however,  as 
whole-hearted  supporters  of  Mrs.  Grundy,  were 
also  gravely  consulted. 

Swinburne,  as  might  well  be  supposed,  was  a 
little  restive  under  all  this  examination,  and  he 
very  properly  insisted  that  censure  should  confine 
itself  to  the  plain  issue  of  whether  the  British 
public  would  or  would  not  "stand"  such  a  dish 
of  strong  meat.  He  invited  no  other  criticism, 
and  he  wrote  to  Houghton  with  a  proper  dignity : 
"As  to  my  quantities  and  metre  and  rule  of 
rhythm  and  rhyme,  I  defy  castigation.  The 
head-master  has  sent  me  up  for  good  on  that 
score,  —  Mr.  Tennyson  tells  me  in  a  note  that  he 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  139 

*  envies  me  my  gift  that  way.'  After  this 
approval,  I  will  not  submit  myself  to  the  birch 
on  that  account." 

We  have  seen  that  he  had  been  taken  in  1858 
to  dine  with  Tennyson,  who  then  wrote  of  him 
as  *'a  very  modest  and  intelligent  young  fellow" ; 
and  now  the  Laureate,  having  read  Atalanta, 
remarked,  "It  is  many  a  long  day  since  I  have 
read  anything  so  fine."  In  December  1865, 
when  the  manuscript  of  Poems  and  Ballads  was 
being  put  together,  Tennyson  came  up  to  London 
on  one  of  his  rare  visits, ,  and  Palgrave  asked 
Houghton  to  bring  Swinburne  to  see  his  illustrious 
guest.  But  the  visit  was  not  wholly  a  success ; 
after  a  few  words  of  civility  had  passed  between 
the  poets,  they  found  nothing  more  to  say  to  one 
another.  Swinburne  withdrew,  with  G.  H.  Lewes, 
to  another  room,  and  monologuized  in  rather 
falsetto  tones  about  Blake  and  Flaxman.  He 
was  unduly  excited,  and,  in  short,  he  behaved  in 
a  way  which  greatly  incensed  Houghton,  who, 
while  taking  him  back  to  his  lodgings,  admin- 
istered to  him  "an  avalanche  of  advice"  as  to 
how  to  behave  in  presence  of  his  elders  and  betters, 
advice  which  was  very  angrily  resented  and  led 
to  a  temporary  cooling  of  friendship. 

This  incident  was  highly  characteristic,  and 
may  be  taken  as  a  type  of  much  which  has  been 
repeated  and  may  be  repeated  again.  Swinburne 
was  now  becoming  unfitted  for  general  society, 
because  the  presence  of  many  persons,  and  particu- 
larly of  strangers,  fretted  him,  and  because  he  was 
unable  to  resist  the  tide  of  excitement  which  con- 
siderations of  literature  and  art  loosened  in  his 


140  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

being,    and    which   flooded   his    brain,    distracted 
his  voice,  and  disarticulated  his  limbs. 

It  is  thought  to  have  been  in  1866  that  Swin- 
burne became  acquainted  at  the  Arts  Club  with 
Dr.  George  Bird,  already  the  intimate  friend  of 
the  Burtons  and  the  Spartalis.  This  excellent 
physician,  whose  tastes  were  markedly  intellectual 
and  artistic,  and  who  had  enjoyed  the  intimacy 
of  Leigh  Hunt  in  his  last  years,  was  an  unqualified 
admirer  of  Atalanta  in  Calydon.  He  had  a 
nature,  sympathetic  and  serene,  which  instantly 
commended  itself  to  Swinburne,  who  soon  became 
a  constant  visitor  to  him  and  to  his  sister.  Miss 
Alice  Bird,  at  their  house  in  Welbeck  Street. 
Algernon's  meetings  here  with  Richard  Burton 
have  already  been  mentioned.  Dr.  Bird  became 
Swinburne's  guardian-angel,  as  well  as  his  doctor, 
and  in  the  double  capacity  saved  him  from  many 
results  of  his  wild  impulsiveness.  Once,  some 
years  later  than  the  point  which  we  have  now 
reached,  the  poet  completely  vanished,  to  the 
extreme  alarm  of  his  family.  Admiral  Swin- 
burne came  up  from  Holmwood  in  great  agitation, 
and,  helpless  to  discover  the  truant,  applied  to 
Dr.  George  Bird  and  his  sister.  Alone  with  Miss 
Bird  for  a  few  moments,  the  Admiral  said,  with 
pathetic  solicitude,  "Miss  Bird,  God  has  en- 
dowed my  son  with  genius,  but  He  has  not 
vouchsafed  to  grant  him  self-control."  On  this 
occasion,  and  on  others  of  a  more  or  less  dis- 
tressing kind,  the  prodigal  was  found  and  re- 
stored to  his  lodgings  by  the  devotion  and 
cleverness  of  Dr.  Bird,  to  whom,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say,  he  owed  his  life  not  once  nor  twice. 


POEMS   AND  BALLADS  141 

The  little  breeze  with  Houghton,  who  dis- 
played on  these  occasions  a  most  amiable  patience, 
soon  blew  itself  out,  and  the  preparations  for 
collecting  the  lyrics  went  forward  undisturbed. 
In  January  1866  it  was  decided  to  make  a  be- 
ginning by  issuing,  as  a  test,  a  small  privately 
printed  edition  of  what  was,  oddly  enough, 
looked  upon  by  the  friends  as  the  most  dangerous 
of  the  pieces,  namely,  Laus  Veneris.  Accordingly, 
Moxon  issued  a  very  few  copies  of  this  poem  as 
a  little  book  by  itself.  Of  the  genesis  of  this 
interesting  pamphlet,  Swinburne  gave  an  account 
in  later  years.  "It  was,"  he  wrote,  "more  an 
experiment  to  ascertain  the  public  taste  —  and 
forbearance  !  —  than  anything  else.  Moxon,  I 
well  remember,  was  terribly  nervous  in  those 
days."  The  reference  is  to  the  firm,  since  Moxon 
himself  was  dead,  but  his  business  was  con- 
tinued by  a  certain  J.  Bertram  Payne,  who, 
no  doubt,  represented  "Moxon"  to  the  poet's 
consciousness. 

In  spite,  however,  of  the  imprint  on  Laus 
Veneris,  there  certainly  had  been  a  proposal 
that  the  ancient  firm  of  Murray  should  publish 
the  complete  collection,  and  Lord  Houghton, 
rather  prematurely,  submitted  the  manuscript 
to  Albemarle  Street.  Swinburne  was  not  quite 
pleased;  "I  do  not,"  he  wrote  to  Joseph  Knight, 
"overmuch  like  my  poems  sent  as  it  were  for 
approval  like  those  of  a  novice."  This  anxiety 
was  well  grounded,  for  Mr.  Murray  at  once  re- 
fused them  (March  4),  and  in  terms  which  stung 
the  poet  to  fury.  He  said  that  he  would  permit 
no    more    interference,    and    "Moxon"     finally 


142  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

deciding  to  take  it,  the  thick  volume  now  en- 
titled Poems  and  Ballads  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
printers  by  March  1866.  On  the  19th  of  April 
Swinburne  was  correcting  proofs  of  this  and  of  a 
prose  book  on  Blake  of  which  he  had  sent  part 
to  press  before  the  close  of  1865.  If  the  timidity 
of  publishers  should  seem  to  us  to-day  excessive, 
let  it  be  recalled  that  as  lately  as  1841  Edward 
Moxon  himself  had  been  prosecuted,  and  heavily 
fined,  for  issuing  a  reprint  of  Shellej'^'s  Queen  Mah. 
In  the  light  of  subsequent  action,  we  may  well 
believe  that  the  shadow  of  this  conviction  still 
troubled  the  dreams  of  his  successor. 

Meanwhile,  still  early  in  1866,  Swinburne 
published  with  Moxon  a  judicious  selection  from 
the  lyrical  work  of  Byron,  and  prefixed  to  it  a 
long  critical  study.  In  later  years,  when  his 
attitude  to  Byron  had  become  one  of  pronounced 
hostility,  he  disliked  any  reference  to  this  early 
essay,  which  is  now  little  known.  It  is,  however, 
not  merely  a  sound,  clear,  and  weighty  piece  of 
criticism,  but  is  written  in  a  style  of  unusual 
purity  and  restraint.  No  more  faultless  passage 
of  prose  was  ever  composed  by  Swinburne  than 
that  with  which  the  Byron  of  1866  concludes : 

His  work  was  done  at  Missolonghi ;  all  of  his  work  for 
which  the  fates  could  spare  him  time.  A  little  space 
was  allowed  him  to  show  at  least  a  heroic  purpose,  and 
attest  a  high  design ;  then,  with  all  things  unfinished 
before  him  and  behind,  he  fell  asleep  after  many  troubles 
and  triumphs.  Few  can  ever  have  gone  wearier  to  the 
grave;  none  with  less  fear.  He  had  done  enough  to 
earn  his  rest.  Forgetful  now  and  set  free  for  ever  from 
all  faults  and  foes,  he  passed  through  the  doorway  of  no 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  143 

ignoble  death  out  of  reach  of  time,  out  of  sight  of  love, 
out  of  hearing  of  hatred,  beyond  the  blame  of  England 
and  the  praise  of  Greece.  In  the  full  strength  of  spirit 
and  of  body  his  destiny  overtook  him,  and  made  an 
end  of  all  his  labours.  He  had  seen  and  borne  and 
achieved  more  than  most  men  on  record.  "He  was  a 
great  man,  good  at  many  things,  and  now  he  had  attained 
his  rest." 

Here  the  cadences  are  exquisite,  and  they  are 
proper  to  the  instrument  of  prose.  The  Byron 
of  1866  begins  with  a  handsome  compliment  to 
Matthew  Arnold,  but  it  is  probable  that  to  Arnold 
himself  was  due  Swinburne's  later  prejudice 
against  Byron,  since  he  bitterly  resented  Arnold's 
depreciation  of  Shelley  as  a  mere  satellite  of 
Byron,  and  so  was  drawn  to  meditate  upon 
Byron's  shortcomings  as  a  poet  and  as  a  man. 
It  was  arranged  that  Moxon  should  follow  the 
Selections  from  Byron  by  a  similar  Keats  arranged, 
with  a  critical  preface,  by  Swinburne;  but  in 
the  confusion  which  presently  ensued  this  pro- 
ject was  dropped.  So  also  was  the  scheme  of  a 
literary  magazine  he  was  to  edit. 

In  the  case  of  a  collection  of  lyrical  verse  so 
important  as  Poems  and  Ballads,  it  would  be 
interesting  to  possess  some  indication  of  the 
dates  at  which  the  successive  pieces  were  com- 
posed. But,  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge 
goes,  this  is  impossible.  We  are  not  able  even 
to  conjecture  what  actuated  the  poet  in  the 
existing  arrangement,  or  rather  lack  of  arrange- 
ment, of  the  poems.  He  seems  to  have  shuffled 
them  together,  like  cards  in  a  hat,  with  an  inten- 
tional confusion  of  subject,  date,  and  style.     That 


144    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

they  illustrate  ten  or  eleven  years  of  Swinburne's 
life,  years  in  which  he  was  rapidly  developing 
in  intellectual  experience  and  in  breadth  of 
expression,  this  is  all  that  we  know,  and  it  is 
tantalising  enough  to  the  biographical  critic. 

The  only  light  thrown  on  this  darkness  is 
itself  obscure,  since  the  lines  in  the  Dedication 
to  Edward  Burne-Jones,  in  which  the  poet  says 
of  his  Poems  and  Ballads  that 

Some  sang  to  me  dreaming  in  class-time 

And  truant  in  hand  as  in  tongue ; 
For  the  youngest  were  born  of  boy's  pastime. 
The  eldest  are  young, 

are  refuted  by  his  own  explicit  statement,  at 
a  later  date,  that  he  "burned  every  scrap  of  MS. 
he  had  in  the  world"  when  he  was  eighteen.^ 
But  in  April  1855  —  if  we  may  take  that  as  the 
approximate  date  of  this  destruction  —  he  had 
left  school  for  two  years,  and  the  impression  that 
still-existing  verses  had  been  written  *'in  class- 
time"  at  Eton  is  almost  certainly  an  error  of 
memory.  It  may  be  connected  with  the  strange 
fact  that  about  1865  Swinburne  contrived  to 
persuade  himself,  and  to  convince  some  of  his 
friends,  that  he  was  three  years  younger  than 
he  really  was.  He  cultivated  this  odd  fiction 
for  some  time,  thereby  laying  many  traps  for 
posterity.  On  the  double  supposition,  then, 
that  he  was  born  in  1840,  and  that  Poems  and 
Ballads  covered  eleven  years,  he  would  be  obliged 
to  attribute  the  earliest  of  them  to  his  fifteenth 
year,  when  he  was  still  at  Eton,  and  when  we 

^"Aholibah"  and  "Madonna  Mia"  are  understood  to  be  among  the 
earliest  of  Poems  and  Ballads,  written  perhaps  in  1858. 


POEAIS  AND  BALLADS  145 

know  that  he  "got  full  sense"  for  his  Greek 
elegiacs.  But  this  was  an  innocent  mystification, 
and  there  is  no  evidence  that  a  single  piece  in 
Poems  and  Ballads  was  "blown  with  boy's  mouth 
in  a  reed,"  especially  as  we  have  seen  the  boy 
Algernon  to  have  been  far  from  precocious  as 
a  poet. 

There  were  frequent  attempts  made  by  his 
friends  to  unravel  the  secrets  of  the  volume  of 
1866,  but  Swinburne  never  gave  them  any  help. 
Stedman  undertook  by  a  careful  investigation 
to  date  the  principal  poems,  and  submitted  his 
conjectures  to  the  poet.  He  received  in  reply 
the  baffling  remark,  "Your  guess  at  some  among 
them  is  quite  right,  but  of  course  there  are  more." 
In  1875,  under  pressure  of  this  kind,  Swinburne 
announced:  "You  will  soon  see  the  Poems  and 
Ballads  in  a  new  edition,  and  all  those  written 
at  college  removed  into  the  same  volume  with 
my  two  early  plays,  and  labelled  all  together  as 
Early  Poems'';  but  he  never  carried  out  this 
scheme,  and  the  interesting  secret  seems  to  have 
died  with  him. 

We  know  that  a  great  accession  of  lyrical 
fervour  came  upon  him  in  1862,  when  "Laus 
Veneris,"  and  "Faustine,"  and  "The  Triumph 
of  Time"  were  composed.  I  have  examined  drafts 
of  the  "Ballad  of  Life"  and  the  "Ballad  of  Death," 
which  bear  the  same  date,  and  in  that  year  also 
several  political  poems,  probably  earlier  in  time 
of  composition,  were  printed  in  the  Spectator, 
"  Hermaphroditus  "  was  written  in  Paris  in  March 
1863.  "Itylus"  and  "Felise"  may,  with  more 
or  less  certainty,  be  dated  1864.     "Dolores"  was 


146  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

composed  at  Ashbiirnhain  Place,  in  the  late 
summer  of  1865.  Swinburne  told  me  that  the 
"Ode  to  Victor  Hugo"  was,  he  believed,  written 
in  that  year.  These  are  slight  but  not  valueless 
indications,  and  it  is  possible  that  more  and  more 
definite  data  will  in  due  time  be  forthcoming. 

Meanwhile,  Lord  Houghton  did  not  pause  in 
his  benevolent  work  of  rousing  public  curiosity. 
His  influence  in  social  and  literary  circles  was 
very  considerable,  and  he  threw  himself  with 
zeal  into  any  cause  which  he  took  up.  The 
new  poet  found  himself  excessively  discussed 
beforehand,  and  Lord  Houghton  did  not  hesitate 
to  add  piquancy  to  his  recommendations  by  hints 
of  the  highly-spiced  quality  of  the  dish  that  his 
young  friend  was  preparing.  Perhaps  this  was 
a  little  overdone,  and  the  idle  public  somewhat 
too  mysteriously  warned,  w^ith  nudge  and  wink,  to 
look  out  for  something  vivid.  A  certain  prejudice, 
pre-awakened,  entered  into  the  causes  of  the  out- 
burst which  was  to  follow. 

Meanwhile,  on  the  2nd  of  May  1866,  Lord 
Houghton  took  the  chair  at  the  Anniversary  Dinner 
of  the  Royal  Literary  Fund,  in  Willis'  Rooms. 
Here  was  an  occasion  for  dauntless  propaganda, 
and  it  was  bravely  taken.  The  Chairman  bar- 
gained that,  if  he  came,  he  must  insist  on  his  youth- 
ful and  brilliant  friend,  Mr.  Swinburne,  being 
asked  to  reply  for  "Literature."  The  Committee 
was  more  than  cool,  the  brilliant  and  youthful 
friend  absolutely  refused,  but  Lord  Houghton  was 
not  to  be  put  by.  Wlien  he  wished  for  something, 
it  was  his  custom  to  get  it,  and  on  the  night  of  the 
2nd  of  May,  not  merely  was  the  author  of  Atalanta 


POEMS  AND  BALLADS  147 

among  the  honoured  guests,  but  Venables,  in 
proposing  "the  Historical  and  Imaginative  Litera- 
ture of  England,"  called  upon  Charles  Kingsley 
and  Algernon  Swinburne  to  reply.  What  Ven- 
ables said  is  remarkable,  both  as  indicating  the 
high  position  that  Swinburne  had  already  achieved, 
and  as  showing  an  anxiety  lest  so  spirited  a  steed 
might  kick  over  the  traces.     He  remarked : 

The  representative  of  that  future  generation  is,  I  say 
without  fear  or  hesitation,  Mr.  Swinburne.  He  alone, 
of  his  age,  has  shown  his  power  to  succeed  in  the  highest 
walks  of  poetry.  ...  I  have  no  doubt  that  in  the  long 
career  which  is  probably  before  him,  Mr.  Swinburne 
will  take  many  easier  and  many  pleasanter  subjects 
[than  Chasielard].  .  .  .  He  will  hardly  exceed  the 
beauty  of  the  lyric  flights  which  he  has  accomplished; 
and  I  am  sure  that  he  will  feel  that  as  the  representative 
of  the  future  in  English  poetry  he  has  a  great  responsibility 
upon  him. 

Charles  Kingsley  endorsed  "every  word  that 
Mr.  Venables  had  said"  in  praise  of  Swinburne, 
who  thereupon  rose,  in  the  midst  of  great  curiosity 
and  general  acclamation,  and  recited,  in  shrill, 
monotonous  tones,  the  short  essay  which  he  had 
learned  by  heart.  The  occasion  was  a  very 
curious  one,  for  never  before,  and  never  again 
through  the  whole  of  his  life,  was  Swinburne  to 
make  a  public  appearance  of  this  kind.  He  was 
"single-speech  Algernon"  in  the  fullest  sense  of 
the  phrase. 

His  reply,  preserved  in  the  archives  of  the 
Royal  Literary  Fund,  but  never  republished, 
is  a  very  curious  epitome  of  his  poetical  creed. 
Brief    as    it    was,    Swinburne    found    means    to 


148    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

enshrine  in  it  his  passion  for  Victor  Hugo  and  his 
admiration  for  Baudehiire,  and  to  enunciate, 
for  the  first  time,  that  theory  of  the  triplicity  of 
mediaeval  imagination  which  he  was  so  very 
fond  of  repeating: 

The  Middle  Ages  brought  forth  a  trinity  of  great 
poets :  Dante,  the  Italian  noble ;  Chaucer,  the  English 
gentleman ;  Villon,  the  French  plebeian.  Chaucer 
touches  Dante  with  reluctance,  almost  with  repulsion, 
uses  him  for  a  little,  then  recoils,  and  drops  him  as  a 
child  might  drop  a  hot  iron.  But  when  Chaucer  comes 
upon  the  poetry  of  France  he  feels  instantly  at  home. 
The  spirit  of  southern  France  brightens  and  warms  his 
verse;  the  hot,  sweet  breath  of  Provence  satiates  and 
excites  him.  He  translates,  even  (in  part),  the  intolerable 
Roman  de  la  Rose;  but  the  real  tribute  to  France  is  not 
there;  it  must  be  sought  in  his  Court  of  Love,^  im- 
pregnated with  Provencal  fancy,  permeated  with  Albigen- 
sian  faith ;  in  his  Troilus  and  Cresside,  filled  from 
end  to  end  with  that  fierce  monotony  of  tenderness, 
that  bitter  absorption  of  life,  which  has  made  the 
heathenish  love  of  Provencal  fighters  and  singers  a 
proverb  to  this  day. 

As  a  series  of  historical  statements  all  this  is 
out  of  date,  but  as  evidence  of  the  condition  of 
Swinburne's  mind  in  this  critical  year  1866,  it 
has  permanent  value.  Among  those  who  listened 
to  these  feverish  outpourings  of  genius  were, 
it  is  somewhat  amusing  to  be  told,  Dean  Stanley, 
Henry  Reeve,  Anthony  Trollope,  Sir  Samuel 
Baker,  and  "the  Rev.  Leslie  Stephen,"  besides 
one  or  two  personal  friends,  such  as  Frederic 
Leighton  and  Lord  Milton. 

'  That  this  poem  was  not  written  by  Chaucer,  not  Indeed  until  a  century 
and  a  half  after  his  death,  was  not  at  that  time  suspected. 


POEMS   AND  BALLADS  149 

With  this  evening's  work,  the  labour  of  pre- 
paring for  the  reception  of  Poems  and  Ballads  was 
complete.  The  banquet  was  ready,  the  company 
assembled,  but  the  principal  guest  failed  to 
arrive.  The  volume  had  been  announced  to 
appear  early  in  May;  by  the  middle  of  July  it 
had  still  not  made  its  appearance.  All  the  reasons 
for  this  delay  are  not  quite  defined,  but  it  seems 
that  an  early  copy  of  the  bound  volume  being 
sent  to  the  author  in  May,  he  immediately  detected 
in  it  between  twenty  and  thirty  serious  misprints, 
which  had  escaped  him  in  the  revise.  How  it 
had  been  possible  for  Swinburne  to  overlook  so 
large  a  number  of  faults  in  his  proofs  it  is  not 
easy  to  conjecture,  but  the  fact  is  certain.  He 
returned  the  copy  to  Moxon  forthwith,  insisting 
that  the  errors  might  all  be  rectified  as  com- 
pletely as  possible.  This  involved  a  great  deal 
of  expense  and  delay.  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise,  who  dis- 
covered this  fact,  and  who  has  carefully  compared 
the  original  corrections  in  the  poet's  handwriting 
with  the  final  text,  tells  me  that  "to  effect  this 
revision  some  of  the  sheets  had  to  be  reprinted 
in  toto;  in  certain  cases  portions  only  of  the 
sheets  were  reprinted ;  in  other  instances,  where 
punctuation  only  was  involved,  the  missing  stops 
were  inserted  by  hand."  At  any  rate,  it  was  an 
exasperating  business,  which  delayed  the  final 
appearance  of  the  book  until  late  in  the  summer. 

Algernon  now  experienced  a  loss  which  was, 
as  Sir  George  Otto  Trevelyan  remarked  to  me  in 
a  letter  which  I  print  entire  in  an  Appendix,  *'a 
very  real  and  permanent  misfortune  to  him." 
Pauline,  Lady  Trevelyan,  though  still  in  middle 


150  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

life,  had  for  some  years  been  failing  in  health. 
Swinburne  had  submitted  his  poems  to  her  as 
he  wrote  them,  and  it  is  believed  that  she  was  able 
to  read  some  of  the  proofs  of  Poems  and  Ballads. 
She  left  England  in  a  vain  pursuit  of  recovery, 
and  died  at  Neuchatel  in  Switzerland  on  the  13th 
of  May  1866.  Her  influence  over  Swinburne, 
who  called  her  his  "second  mother,"  had  been 
uniformly  sympathetic  and  wholesome,  and 
during  her  lifetime  the  fear  of  grieving  her 
was  a  constant  check  upon  his  extravagances. 
On  occasion.  Lady  Trevelyan,  whose  social 
authority  among  people  of  various  high  distinc- 
tion was  great,  exercised  it  practically  in  the 
defence  of  the  young  poet,  whose  character  was, 
in  some  quarters,  bitterly  aspersed;  and  he  was 
deeply  and  continuously  grateful  to  her.  In 
after  years  he  never  spoke  of  Lady  Trevelyan 
without  emotion. 

On  receiving  his  copy  of  Poems  and  Ballads, 
Richard  Burton  expressed  his  fear  that  the 
British  public  might  be  unwilling  to  swallow  so 
much  undiluted  paganism.  But  no  one  had 
anticipated  the  storm  of  censure  which  now 
broke  over  Algernon's  radiant  and  mocking  head. 
He  might,  however,  have  defied  the  common 
reviewer,  since  he  had  not  a  few  supporters  in 
the  press,  with  Joseph  Knight  prominent  among 
them.  But  an  antagonist  arose  whose  authority 
could  not  be  disregarded,  and  whose  ferocity 
was  terrible.  By  far  the  most  powerful  organ 
of  literary  opinion  in  1866  was  the  Saturday 
Review,  in  which,  on  the  4th  of  August,  appeared  a 
very  long  article  entitled  "Mr.  Swinburne's  New 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  151 

Poems,"  an  article  that  not  merely  transformed 
the  fortunes  of  that  particular  edition  or  volume, 
but  created  a  prejudiced  conception  of  the  poet 
from  which  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  he 
suffered  until  the  end  of  his  life. 

This  review,  which  was  brilliantly  written,  came 
from  the  pen  of  an  Oxford  man,  afterwards  not 
less  famous  than  Swinburne  himself,  who  had  been 
for  years  at  the  University  with  him,  but  had 
never  happened  to  meet  him.  By  the  odd  fate  of 
things,  the  writer  later  on  became  one  of  Swin- 
burne's closest  friends  and  supporters,  although 
he  never  distinctly  withdrew  from  the  position 
he  had  taken  up  in  censuring  the  "libidinous 
songs"  of  1866.  It  was  in  this  review,  which 
was  a  nine-days'  wonder  in  the  world  of  letters, 
that  strong  publicity  was  first  given  to  several 
phrases  —  such  as  "The  lilies  and  languors  of 
virtue,  the  roses  and  raptures  of  vice,"  or  "Thou 
art  noble  and  nude  and  antique,"  —  which  im- 
mediately became  hack-lines  and  the  prey  of 
parodists.  A  quotation  from  this  very  powerful 
and  mordant  review  may  be  given  as  the  model 
of  what  was  from  this  time  forward  to  be  alleged 
by  Swinburne's  opponents : 

Mr.  Swinburne  riots  in  the  profusion  of  colour  of  the 
most  garish  and  heated  kind.  He  is  like  a  composer  who 
should  fill  his  orchestra  with  trumpets,  or  a  painter  who 
should  exclude  every  colour  but  a  blaring  red  and  a  green 
as  of  sour  fruit.  There  are  not  twenty  stanzas  in  the 
whole  book  which  have  the  faintest  tincture  of  soberness. 
We  are  in  the  midst  of  fire  and  serpents,  wine  and  ashes, 
blood  and  foam,  and  a  hundred  lurid  horrors.  Un- 
sparing  use   of   the   most    violent   colours   and   the   most 


152  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

intoxicated   ideas   and   images   is   Mr.   Swinburne's  prime 
characteristic. 

But  the  moral  charges  were  far  severer  than 
the  literary.  The  poet  was  called  "an  unclean 
fiery  imp  from  the  pit"  and  "the  libidinous 
laureate  of  a  pack  of  satyrs."  He  was  accused 
of  an  "audacious  counterfeiting  of  strong  and 
noble  passion  by  mad  intoxicated  sensuality." 
He  had  "revealed  to  the  world  a  mind  all  aflame 
with  the  feverish  carnality  of  a  schoolboy  over 
the  dirtiest  passages  in  Lempriere."  x\ll  this 
and  more,  in  the  columns  of  the  leading  literary 
newspaper  of  the  age,  formed  a  loud  and  clear 
call  for  conclusive  public  reprobation. 

The  next  week  was  the  most  agitating  in 
Algernon's  life.  As  it  happened,  the  Saturday 
Review  had  condemned  the  book  before  it  was 
obtainable  in  the  shops,  the  copy  on  which  it 
based  its  attack  having  been  delivered  for  criti- 
cism in  advance  of  the  regular  publication.  The 
note  struck  by  the  Saturday  Review  was  im- 
mediately repeated,  in  more  or  less  virulence 
and  panic,  by  other  newspapers.  A  report  was 
spread  abroad  that  the  Times  was  preparing 
an  attack  on  the  book,  which  would  include  a 
demand  for  the  criminal  prosecution  of  the 
publisher.  Payne  had  not  hesitated,  but  on  the 
5th  of  August  had  curtly  informed  Swinburne 
that  Poems  and  Ballads  was  withdrawn  from  sale. 
He  did  this,  as  Swinburne  complained,  "without 
consulting,  without  warning  and  without  com- 
pensation," a  victim  to  sudden  and  craven  panic. 
Swinburne  was  constitutionally  unable  to  attend 
to    business    which    required    patience    and    self- 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  153 

restraint,  and  D.  G.  Rossetti  and  his  brother, 
Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti,  took  up  the  matter  for  him. 
They  called  at  the  house  of  Moxon,  in  Dover 
Street,  and  saw  Bertram  Payne,  who  treated 
them  with  scant  respect.  They  reported  on 
their  return  that  the  pubHsher  was  distracted 
with  terror  of  the  Pubhc  Prosecutor,  and  desired 
nothing  so  much  as  to  be  rid  of  the  poet  and 
all  his  friends. 

On  the  other  hand,  Swinburne  received  warm 
support  and  sympathy  from  many  sources,  and 
several  of  them  unexpected.  George  Meredith 
wrote  to  him  not  to  care,  although  this  was 
"decidedly  the  Era  of  the  Tame  Ox."  Lord 
Lytton,  who  had  been  an  early  admirer  of  Atalanta, 
wrote  to  him  at  once  in  most  consolatory  tones, 
and  offered  his  practical  help.  Swinburne  went 
down  to  Knebworth,  whither  Forster  was  asked 
to  meet  him,  and  he  stayed  there  for  nearly  a  week. 
Meanwhile,  Lord  Lytton  looked  into  his  affairs, 
and  arranged,  through  Joseph  Knight,  for  the 
republication  of  Poems  and  Ballads  by  a  firm 
more  courageous  than  Moxon's.  Lytton  de- 
scribed the  poet,  who  was  then  in  his  thirtieth 
year,  as  one  who  looked  sixteen,  "a  pale,  sickly 
boy";  "he  inspires  one  with  sadness;  but  he  is 
not  so  sad  himself,  and  his  self-esteem  is  solid  as 
a  rock."  With  regard  to  the  supposed  immoral 
horrors  of  the  poems,  Lytton  confessed  himself 
with  naivete :  "the  beauty  of  diction  and  master- 
ship of  craft  in  melodies  really  so  dazzled  me  that 
I  did  not  see  the  naughtiness  till  pointed  out." 

Lord  Houghton,  away  for  his  health  at  Vichy, 
was   inclined   to   underestimate   the  fury  of   the 


154    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

newspapers,  but  recommended  reliance  on  the 
wisdom  and  experience  of  Lord  Lytton.  Accord- 
ingly, Swinburne  removed  all  his  publications 
from  Messrs.  Moxon,  and  also,  as  has  only  lately 
become  known,  withdrew  the  sheets  of  the  prac- 
tically complete  monograph  of  William  Blake, 
which  were  stored  in  that  arrested  condition  till 
they  were  brought  out  two  years  later  by  John 
Camden  Hotten,  that  somewhat  notorious  trades- 
man being  now  the  only  one  who  would  take 
the  risk  of  bringing  out  the  works  of  a  poet  who 
had  publicly  been  stigmatised  for  immorality. 

Swinburne,  though  advised  by  Lord  Houghton, 
had  been  very  unwilling  to  put  any  work  of  his, 
"anonymous  or  pseudonymous  or  signed,  into  the 
hands  of  Hotten,"  but  beggars  cannot  be  choosers, 
and  he  had  to  face  the  alternative  of  being  crushed 
into  complete  obscurity  or  illuminated  by  that 
somewhat  dingy  imprint.  For  the  existing  copies 
of  Poems  and  Ballads  Hotten  paid  Moxon 
£200.  In  September  all  Swinburne's  books,  with 
fresh  title-pages  and  bindings,  reappeared  under 
this  new  sign,  and  once  more  the  demand  for 
prosecution  was  uttered.  The  cry  was  led,  or 
so  at  least  Swinburne  believed,  by  the  social 
reformer  J.  M.  Ludlow  (1821-1911),  who  appears 
at  the  same  time  to  have  called  Victor  Hugo  a 
"quack."  Swinburne  poured  forth  a  string  of 
amusing  verse-invectives  against  Ludlow,  but  as 
they  were  not  fitted  for  publication  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  the  zealous  friend  of  Kingsley  and 
Maurice  never  saw  them.  Ludlow  demanded 
the  prosecution  of  Poems  and  Ballads,  but  there 
was    no    longer    any    ardent    response,    and    an 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  155 

especial  appeal  to  Riiskin  to  lead  the  popular 
clamour  was  received  in  terms  which  must  have 
disconcerted  the  objectors.  Although,  as  Sir 
E.  T.  Cooke  slyly  remarks,  Ruskin  *'was  not 
usually  averse  from  reading  moral  lectures,"  he 
refused  to  do  it  on  this  occasion.     He  replied : 

[Swinburne]  is  infinitely  above  me  in  all  knowledge 
and  power,  and  I  should  no  more  think  of  advising  him 
or  criticising  him  than  of  venturing  to  do  it  to  Turner  if 
he  were  aUve  again.  .  .  .  He  is  simply  one  of  the  mightiest 
scholars  of  his  age  in  Europe.  ...  In  power  of  imagina- 
tion and  understanding  he  simply  sweeps  me  away  before 
him  as  a  torrent  does  a  pebble.  I'm  righter  than  he  is  — 
so  are  the  lambs  and  the  swallows,  but  they're  not  his 
match. 

This  was  generous  and  effective,  but  it  is  im- 
possible to  forget  that  an  appeal  had  been  made 
beforehand  to  Ruskin  with  regard  to  the  propriety 
of  publishing  Poems  and  Ballads,  and  that  he  had 
professed  to  see  no  cause  of  offence.  He  was 
therefore  bound  in  honour  to  support  the  culprit, 
although  we  may  conjecture  that  he  had  not 
studied  "Anactoria"  or  *' Dolores"  with  any  very 
close  attention. 

When  agreeing  to  reissue  Poems  and  Ballads, 
Hotten,  who  was  an  astute  purveyor,  made 
verbal  terms  which  afterwards  proved  very 
awkward.  He  published,  in  a  very  small  edition, 
in  paper  covers,  Cleopatra,  which  was  new,  and 
has  never  been  reprinted,  George  Meredith  having 
condemned  it  as  *'a  farrago  of  the  most  obvious 
commonplaces  of  *  Swinburne's  ordinary  style.'" 
Hotten  also  suggested  and  even  urged  that  the 
poet    should    accompany    the    republication    of 


15G  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Poems  and  Ballads  by  a  prose  apology  or  defence. 
Other  friends  —  Rossetti,  Ruskin,  and  Joseph 
Knight  in  particular  —  thought  the  suggestion  a 
good  one,  and  urged  Swinburne  to  accede  to 
Hotten's  request.  At  first  he  was  unwilling,  in 
I  the  extravagance  of  wounded  pride,  to  take  the 
slightest  notice  of  his  assailants.  "Their  verdict," 
he  wrote,  "to  me  is  a  matter  of  infinite  indiffer- 
ence ;  it  is  of  equally  small  moment  to  me 
whether  in  such  eyes  as  theirs  I  appear  moral 
or  immoral.  Christian  or  pagan."  But  he  gave 
way  on  the  reflection  "that  science  must  not  scorn 
to  investigate  animalcules  and  infusoria,"  and 
he  consented  "for  once  to  play  the  anatomist." 

The  early  weeks  of  September  1866  were 
occupied  with  the  composition  of  Notes  on  Poems 
and  Revieivs.  This  is  the  earliest,  and  on  the 
whole  the  freshest  and  most  vivacious,  of  Swin- 
burne's controversial  writings.  It  is  not  in  any 
sense  an  apology ;  there  is  much  more  of  the 
red  flag  than  the  white  sheet  about  it.  It  is 
the  protest  of  a  very  angry  and  arrogant  young 
man  against  what  he  considers  to  be  at  once  an 
injustice  and  an  impertinence.  The  attitude  is 
sublime  in  its  defiance,  and  might  at  a  touch 
become  ridiculous.  It  is  saved  from  that  anti- 
climax by  a  deft  adroitness,  and  by  the  remark- 
able purity  of  the  style.  Swinburne  was  writing 
prose  extremely  well  when  he  composed  his 
amusing  Notes  on  Poems  and  Reviews. 

It  is  notoriously  difficult  to  reply  with  grace 
to  a  charge  of  indelicacy,  which,  in  our  chilly 
climate,  is  equivalent  to  a  charge  of  want  of  good 
sense  and  good  manners.     The  victim  may  bow 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  157 

the  head,  Hke  Dryden,  or  attack  the  plaintiff's 
attorney,  hke  Byron;  Swinburne  adopted  an 
attitude  which  more  closely  resembled  that  of 
Congreve  under  the  lash  of  Jeremy  Collier.  He 
denied  the  truth  of  his  critics'  animadversions, 
questioned  their  good  faith,  and  lavished  con- 
tempt on  their  pretensions  to  purity,  learning, 
and  taste.  He  said  that  he  was  not  "virtuous" 
enough  to  know  what  the  reviewers  meant,  nor 
"vicious"  enough  to  explain  or  imagine.  "Ma 
corruption,"  he  amusingly  quoted,  "rougirait 
de  leur  pudeur."  The  only  fault  he  recognised 
in  himself  was  that  he  had  underrated  "the 
evidence  which  every  day  makes  clearer,  that 
our  time  has  room  only  for  such  as  are  content 
to  write  for  children  and  girls."  This  was  the 
strength  of  his  position,  and  the  point  at  which 
his  pamphlet  did  most  service  to  literature. 
Swinburne's  analysis  of  particular  lyrics,  his 
elaborate  irony  and  appeal  to  French  authorities 
which  were  already  becoming  obscure,  his  lofti- 
ness, his  bursts  of  coloured  rhetoric  —  these  are 
merely  more  or  less  entertaining.  But  his 
passionate  appeal  for  a  reasonable  and  manly 
liberty  of  utterance,  his  indignation  at  the  idea 
that  nothing  must  be  published  which  is  not 
"fit  and  necessary  food  for  female  infancy"  — 
this  struck  a  new  note,  or  revived  a  forgotten 
note,  of  wholesome  freedom,  and  permanently 
strengthened  the  hands  of  all  those  who  "profess 
to  deal  neither  in  poison  nor  in  pap." 

The  Notes  were  written  at  Holmwood,  close 
to  Henley-on-Thames,  where  Algernon's  parents 
were  now  settled.     Later  in  August  he  paid  Lord 


158  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Houghton  a  visit  at  Fryston,  and  the  greater  part 
of  September  he  spent  at  Penllwyn,  near  Aberyst- 
wyth, with  a  young  Welsh  squire,  whose  ac- 
quaintance he  had  made  towards  the  close  of  the 
preceding  year,  but  with  whom  he  now  became  in- 
timate. This  w^as  George  Powell  of  Nant-Eos,  who 
continued  to  be  for  several  years  Swinburne's  close 
companion  and  confidant.  The  poet  bathed  in 
the  sea,  climbed  the  downs,  and  raced  on  horse- 
back along  the  sands,  recovering  in  the  open  air, 
as  he  always  magically  did,  the  youth  and 
splendour  of  which  London  so  fatally  robbed  him. 
He  was  particularly  happy  at  Aberystwj^th  this 
September,  gazing  over  the  bay  of  Cardigan  to 
the  tender  west,  "where,"  as  he  wrote,  *'the 
shadows  of  all  happy  and  holy  things  live  beyond 
the  sunset  a  sacred  and  a  sleepless  life,"  at  peace 
with  nature  and  himself  after  the  fierce  and 
fiery  controversies  of  the  summer. 

There  is  no  question  that  the  riotous  notoriety 
given  to  Poems  and  Ballads  had  a  disturbing 
influence  on  Swinburne's  temperament.  It  made 
him  exacting  and  self-conscious.  Up  to  this 
time  he  had  lived  the  life  of  a  wonderful  child, 
depending,  with  great  simplicity,  on  the  affection 
of  a  narrow  circle  of  friends,  who  were  far  too 
strongly  devoted  to  him  to  allow  his  irresponsible 
moods  to  worry  them.  But  now  he  was  thrown, 
with  a  sudden  immense  publicity,  on  the  world 
in  general,  and  exposed  to  the  flatteries  and  the 
insults  of  a  crowd  of  strangers.  A  legend  sprang 
up  about  him,  and  the  wildest  stories  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth,  and  even  found  expression 
in  the  press.     He  became  irritable  under  what 


POEMS  AND  BALLADS  159 

he  held  to  be  injustice,  although  indeed  he  had 
courted  a  sensation.  In  this  juncture  he  looked 
for  help  from  his  friends,  but  several  of  those  on 
whom  he  most  depended  were  absent.  Lady 
Trevelyan  was  dead.  Whistler,  Burton,  and 
Leighton  were  out  of  England.  The  Rossettis, 
the  Burne-Joneses,  and  George  Howard  (after- 
wards Lord  Carlisle),  indeed,  were  loyal  and 
helpful,  but  Swinburne  fell  into  the  hands  of 
other  and  later  associates,  whose  company  was 
not  always  of  advantage  to  him. 

Li  particular,  about  this  time,  he  became  in- 
volved, like  Rossetti  and  Ruskin,  in  the  ambitions 
of  the  strange  young  Anglo-Portuguese,  Charles 
Augustus  Howell,  who  became  his  man  of  business, 
the  partner  of  his  amusements,  the  confidant  of 
his  literary  projects,  and  often  his  main  channel 
of  communication  with  the  world.  For  seven 
or  eight  years,  until  the  arrival  of  Theodore 
Watts  on  the  scene,  Howell  was  to  Swinburne 
all  that  Atticus  was  to  Cicero.  From  a  material 
point  of  view  it  is  not  clear  that  Swinburne  suffered 
as  D.  G.  Rossetti,  Burne-Jones,  and  Ruskin  are 
said  to  have  done  from  the  vagaries  of  Howell,  but 
a  worse  factotum  could  scarcely  have  been  found 
for  Swinburne  in  these  critical  and  fervid  years. 

No  relationship  of  this  early  period  has  been 
so  little  understood  as  that  with  Whistler,  which 
now  underwent  an  unhappy  modification.  Swin- 
burne and  Whistler  had,  for  three  or  four  years, 
lived  in  an  intimacy  which  was  of  much  advantage 
to  the  poet,  who  found  in  the  extraordinary 
painter  a  companion  as  hyperaesthetic  as  him- 
self, and  yet  not  hurtful  to  him.     Their  mutual 


160    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

peculiarities  of  character  did  not  clash,  and  an 
artistic  sympathy  of  great  warmth,  and  disturbed 
by  no  jealousy,  united  them.  No  piece  in  the 
Poems  and  Ballads  was  more  discussed  than 
"Before  the  IVlirror,"  an  ode  of  ardent  admiration 
for  Whistler's  noblest  picture,  now  known  as  "The 
Little  White  Girl."  Whistler  had  been  attacked 
in  18G5  as  outrageously  as  Swinburne  was  in  1866, 
and  the  publication  of  this  poem  was  an  act  of 
signal  intellectual  courage.  But  when  his  ow^n 
turn  came  Swinburne  received  no  comfort  from 
Whistler.  The  reason  was  that  Whistler  spent 
almost  the  whole  of  1866  at  Valparaiso,  and 
probably  knew  nothing  of  what  was  going  on  in 
England.  But  Swinburne  thought  that  he  ought 
to  have  written  to  him  from  Chile,  and  he  re- 
sented the  painter's  silence.  He  did  not  go  near 
Whistler's  mother,  that  admirable  woman  to 
whom  Swinburne  owed  so  much,  and  when 
Whistler  reappeared  in  London,  and  settled  at 
96  Cheyne  Walk  in  February  1867,  Swinburne 
was  cross,  and  held  aloof.  This  coldness  con- 
tinued, although  courteous  relations  were  after- 
wards resumed ;  and  the  two  remained  on  fair 
terms  until  the  deplorable  quarrel   in   1888. 

These  are  private  considerations ;  in  the 
public  view,  Algernon  Swinburne  in  the  winter 
of  1866  was  simply  the  young  man  of  almost 
fabulous  genius,  who  had  produced  a  sensation 
among  lovers  of  poetry  such  as  had  not  been 
approached  since  the  youth  of  Tennyson.  As 
an  eminent  critic,  then  an  undergraduate  at 
Oxford,  has  said,  "It  simply  swept  us  off  our 
legs   with   rapture."     At   Cambridge   the   young 


POEMS   AND  BALLADS  161 

men  joined  hands  and  marched  along  shouting 
"Dolores"  or  "A  Song  in  time  of  Revolution." 
The  volume  was  mixed  up  with  other  fire-crackers 
in  the  preparation  for  the  Fifth  of  November. 
It  stood  for  passion  and  flame  and  revolt,  it 
raced  beside  the  swiftest  of  its  admirers  and  easily 
beat  them.  As  Mr.  Saintsbury,  himself  an  ardent 
youth  in  those  days,  outside  any  circle  of  personal 
relations  with  the  poet,  has  recorded,  "all  the 
metaphors  and  similes  of  water,  light,  wind,  fire, 
all  the  modes  of  motion"  seemed  to  inspire  and 
animate  this  wonderful  poetry,  which  took  the 
whole  lettered  youth  of  England  by  storm  with 
its  audacity  and  melody. 

During  the  month  of  October  Notes  on  Poems 
and  Reviews,  "my  defensive  and  offensive  Laus 
Diabolo,"  was  published,  and  was  received  with 
considerable  favour.  It  was  seen  through  the 
press  by  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti,  who,  by  excision 
of  several  of  the  most  unguarded  passages, 
curbed  the  noble  indignation  of  the  poet.  The 
Notes  were  on  the  whole  favourably  received. 
Even  the  Saturday  Review  executed  a  more  or 
less  respectful  recantation.  About  the  same 
time  a  small  volume  of  criticism  of  Swinburne's 
poetry  was  published  by  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti; 
this  was  excellent  in  tone  and  laudatory  with- 
out partiality  or  exaggeration.  Meanwhile,  the 
notoriety  of  Poems  and  Ballads  showed  no  sign 
of  diminution,  and  it  was  at  this  time  that 
George  Augustus  Sala,  called  upon  at  a  public 
dinner  to  give  thanks  for  poetry,  replied  that  he 
did  so  "in  the  names  of  the  clever  (but  I  cannot 
say   moral)    Mr.    Swinburne,    and   of   the    moral 


162  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

(but  I  cannot  say  clever)  Mr.  Tupper."  The 
United  States  caught  the  infection,  and  Swin- 
burne wrote  to  a  friend  (Nov.  21,  1866)  :  "I 
have  gone  through  five  editions  in  as  many  days 
in  America ;  a  sterile  success  which  brings  much 
clamour  and  no  profit  with  it."  His  American 
publisher,  G.  \Y.  Carleton,  made  a  spirited  fight, 
but  had,  he  complained,  "a  rough  time  of  it." 
He  bowed  before  the  storm  and  withdrew  the 
book,  neglecting,  so  the  poet  asserted,  to  pay 
him  any  royalties,  although  the  price  of  single 
copies  went  up  to  five  dollars. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  were  rapturous  ad- 
mirers everywhere,  and  "a  lady  in  Florence 
has  written  a  poem  about  me  and  my  critics, 
in  which  it  is  stated  that  the  seven  leading 
angels  of  heaven  are  now  occupied  in  singing 
my  praises  before  God,  and  returning  thanks 
to  him  for  my  existence.  This  is  cheerful  to 
know."  Lord  Houghton  defended  his  young 
friend  in  the  Examiner,  under  the  signature, 
*' Nothing  if  not  critical,"  and  Professor  Henry 
Morley  was  another  apologist.  In  the  shelter 
of  Holmwood  the  poet  settled  dow^n  to  an 
active  winter.  He  was  now  studying  with 
warm  appreciation  the  writings  of  Whitman ;  he 
wrote  to  Houghton  (Nov.  2,  1866):  "If  you 
have  read  the  Drum  Taps  of  the  great  Walt 
(whose  friends  have  published  a  pamphlet  in  his 
defence),  I  daresay  you  agree  with  me  that  his 
dirge  or  nocturn  over  your  friend  Lincoln  is  a 
superb  piece  of  music  and  colour.  It  is  infinitely 
impressive  when  read  aloud."  He  reflected  upon 
Walt   Whitman   while   writing   the   last   chapters 


.ylA^ernc-ii,   UhcLnie^  C'-to^Liil^urn 


^ntny'QJa/JaCf-  fik-Jc^ 


lOIV 


/ 


POEMS   AND   BALLADS  163 

of  his  William  Blake,  a  critical  Essay,  which  he 
completed  in  November  1866,  although  it  was 
delayed  in  publication  till  1868.  In  the  same 
month  he  began  the  Song  of  Italy,  which  he  thus 
announced  in  a  letter  of  November  29th  : 

I  have  been  doing  more  verses  on  Italia  (excuse  —  I 
can't  spell  it  Englishwise)  —  which  some  people  think  as 
good  at  least  as  my  best  things.  Of  course  as  a  fanatic 
I  can't  judge ;  it  looks  to  me  simply  flat  and  inadequate ; 
but  I  think  the  verses  are  good  for  me,  however  bad  they 
may  be  for  her  (I  mean  it). 

A  brief  return  to  London  not  merely  brought 
all  this  creative  activity  to  an  end,  but  violently 
affected  his  health.  He  seemed  unable  to  resist 
succumbing  to  the  most  debilitating  irregularities. 
His  family  insisted  on  his  hurrying  back  to 
Holmwood,  where  he  quickly  recovered,  and 
presently  resumed  the  Song  of  Italy,  which  he 
completed  in  February  1867.  The  winter  passed 
peacefully  at  Holmwood,  where,  as  *' poetry  is 
at  a  discount  and  music  idolised,"  the  unfortunate 
Algernon  professed  himself  subjected  to  a  double 
torture.  ^  For  music  he  had  no  gift  nor  apprecia- 
tion. Not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it,  he 
was  totally  devoid  of  "ear,"  and  to  listen  to  a 
performance  on  any  instrument  drove  him  wild 
with  petulance  and  impatience.  At  Holmwood 
poetry  was  not  delighted  in,  and  the  piano  was 
triumphant.  But  this  was  a  crease  in  the  rose- 
leaf,  and,  in  matter  of  fact,  he  was  profoundly 
happy  and  serene  at  home. 


CHAPTER   VI 

SONGS   OF   THE   REPUBLIC 

(1867-1870) 

When  1867  opened  Swinburne  was  still  in  a  self- 
conscious  state  of  upheaval,  still,  as  he  put  it, 
*'the  centre  of  such  a  moral  chaos  that  even  our 
excellent  Houghton  maintains  a  discreet  and 
consistent  neutrality."  His  late  publishers  pre- 
tended ignorance  of  his  address,  and  dismissed 
all  his  correspondence  to  the  Dead  Letter  Office. 
This  and  other  impertinences  produced  in  him  a 
sort  of  reckless  dejection.  He  had  braved  public 
opinion,  and  now  he  shrank  from  an  obloquy 
which  he  had  courted,  and  the  extent  of  which 
he  exaggerated.  Yet  he  had  no  intention  of 
pacifying  his  enemies ;  he  even  planned  a  more 
determined  attack  on  their  susceptibilities.  On 
the  11th  of  January  he  wrote  to  Burton,  who  was 
now  consul  at  Santos  in  Brazil : 

I  have  in  hand  a  scheme  of  mixed  verse  and  prose/  —  a 
sort  of  etude  a  la  Balzac  plus  the  poetry  —  which  I  flatter 

^  Swinburne  carried  out  this  scheme  in  a  disjointed  romance  called, 
from  the  name  of  its  heroine,  Lesbia  Brandon.  After  keeping  it  for 
nearly  ten  years  in  MS.,  he  had  it  set  up  in  type  in  1877.  The  original 
MS.  is  lost,  but  a  single  galley-proof,  lacking  both  the  beginning  and 
the  end,  was  kept  by  Mr.  Andrew  Chatto,  and  is  now  in  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise's 
collection.  In  his  opinion  and  mine  this  melange  of  prose  and  verse, 
which  Swinburne  thought  he  had  completely  suppressed,  ought  never 
to  be  published. 


SONGS   OF  THE   REPUBLIC         165 

myself  will  be  more  ofiFensive  and  objectionable  to  Britannia 
than  anything  I  have  yet  done.  You  see  I  have  now  a 
character  to  keep  up. 

His  opening  work  in  1867,  however,  was  the 
completion  of  a  long  "Ode  on  the  Insurrection 
in  Candia,"  which  he  had  begun  at  Aberystwyth. 
This  is  the  earliest  poem  in  which  we  detect  the 
transcendental  tone  that  was  to  fill  the  volume 
of  Songs  before  Sunrise.  It  is  a  fine  performance, 
learnedly  constructed,  but  it  is  a  little  dull, 
and  in  later  years  the  poet  disliked  to  hear  it 
mentioned.  He  was  conscious,  I  think,  of  a 
slight  insincerity  in  the  enthusiasm  it  expressed, 
for  though  he  was  very  deeply  concerned  for 
Mentana  and  Custozza,  he  did  not  really  care 
whether  the  Candians  insurrected  or  not.  The 
Ode  was  a  false  start  in  the  race  for  Italy,  and 
it  was  at  this  precise  awkward  moment  that  it 
occurred  to  the  Master  of  Balliol,  Dr.  Jowett,  who 
had  never  ceased  to  follow  Swinburne's  career 
with  interest,  that  his  intellectual  high  spirits 
might  be  utilised  and  his  thoughts  led  away  from 
Cotytto  and  Astarte  by  concentrating  his  energies 
on  the  Republican  movement  in  Italy.  This 
movement  was  then  vitalised  in  England  by  the 
presence  amongst  us  of  the  devoted  and  inspiring 
Giuseppe  Mazzini  (1805-72),  who,  having  left 
Italy  under  sentence  of  death,  had  now  been  long 
resident  in  London. 

Swinburne's  political  aspirations,  and  his  occa- 
sional political  poems,  had  been  increasingly  in 
sympathy  with  the  Republic  which  Mazzini 
designed,  but  he  was  still  unacquainted  with 
the    great     leader     in     whose    honour    he    had 


IGG  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

written  an  ode  ten  years  before.  Certain  friends 
now  met  at  the  house  of  George  Howard, 
whither  Jowett  came,  and  Mazzini,  brought 
by  Karl  Blind,  to  discuss,  as  Lord  Carlisle  after- 
wards put  it,  "what  could  be  done  with  and  for 
Algernon."  Accordingly  Mazzini,  informed  of 
the  promise  and  situation  of  the  tempestuous 
young  poet,  consented  to  take  intellectual  charge 
of  him.  He  was  shown  the  "Ode  on  the  In- 
surrection in  Candia,"  and  he  wrote  a  letter  to 
Swinburne  (in  March  1867)  in  which  he  expressed 
his  admiration  of  the  spirit  and  form  of  it. 
Swinburne,  never  suspecting  collusion,  took  this 
letter  round  to  show  his  friends  as  a  heaven-sent 
missive  from  the  blue.  Karl  Blind  was  then 
instructed  to  bring  Swinburne  to  Mazzini's  lodg- 
ings. He  did  so,  with  the  help  of  Thomas 
Purnell,  and  the  result  is  described  in  a  letter  the 
next  morning : 

I  unworthy  spent  much  of  last  night  sitting  at  my 
beloved    Chief's    feet.     He    was    angelically    good    to    me. 

I  read  him  my  Italian  poem  all  through  and  he  accepted 
it  in  words  I  can't  trust  myself  to  try  and  write  down. 
.  .  .     To-day   I   am   rather   exhausted   and   out   of   sorts. 

II  y  a  bien  de  quoi.  There's  a  tradition  in  the  Talmud 
that  when  Moses  came  down  from  Sinai  he  was  drunken 
with  the  kisses  of  the  lips  of  God. 

It  is  conceivable  that  Mazzini  also  was  rather 
exhausted  next  day,  for  A  Song  of  Italy  contains 
nearly  one  thousand  verses.  Swinburne  dashed 
off  a  dedication,  "with  all  devotion  and  reverence, 
to  Joseph  Mazzini,"  and  sent  the  little  volume  to 
press. 

In  the  meantime,  in  April  of  this  year,  on  a 


SONGS   OF   THE   REPUBLIC  167 

false  report  in  some  French  newspaper  of  the 
death  of  Baudelaire,  Swinburne  wrote  the  most 
highly -finished  of  all  his  elegiacal  poems,  the 
*'Ave  atque  Vale."  "I  have  written"  (May  23rd) 
*'a  little  sort  of  lyric  dirge  for  my  poor  Baude- 
laire," he  modestly  put  it.  Modelled,  like  most 
great  English  elegies,  on  the  Lament  for  Bion  of 
Moschus,  this  grave  and  stately  threnody  has  a 
soberness,  a  dignity,  which  distinguish  it  among 
the  fervid  writings  of  its  author.  Nowhere  else 
has  Swinburne  come  nearer  to  the  majesty  and 
depth  of  emotion  of  the  purest  Greek  literature, 
nor  clothed  his  thought  in  severer  language : 

Thou  art  far  too  far  for  wings  of  words  to  follow. 
Far  too  far  off  for  thought  or  any  prayer. 
What  ails  us  with  thee,  who  art  wind  and  air  ? 

What  ails  us  gazing  when  all  seen  is  hollow.'* 
Yet  with  some  fancy,  yet  with  some  desire, 
Dreams  pursue  death  as  winds  a  flying  fire, 

Our  dreams  pursue  our  dead  and  do  not  find. 

Still,  and  more  swift  than  they,  the  thin  flame  flies, 

The  low  light  fails  us  in  elusive  skies. 

Still  the  foiled  earnest  ear  is  deaf,  and  blind 
Are  still  the  eluded  eyes. 

In  such  a  stanza  as  this,  as  in  that  which 
celebrates  Sappho,  and  in  the  marvellous  passage 
where  the  poet  compares  himself  with  Orestes, 
we  have  solemn  English  poetry  produced  with 
the  highest  possible  distinction.  Swinburne 
modestly  wrote  (in  this  very  year,  1867) :  *' There 
are  in  the  English  language  three  elegiac  poems 
so  great  that  they  eclipse  and  efface  all  the  elegiac 
poetry  we  know,  all  of  Italian,  all  of  Greek." 
He  meant  Lycidas  and  Adonais  and  Thyrsis, 
but  we  make  them  four,  and  include  "Ave  atque 


168  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Vale."  The  further  history  of  this  latter  is 
curious;  Baudelaire  came  to  life  again,  and 
Swinburne  was  on  the  point  of  tearing  up  his 
elegy.  However,  Baudelaire  died  some  months 
later,  and,  after  a  delay  of  eleven  years,  "Ave 
atque  Vale"  w^as  at  length  included  in  the 
volume  of   1878. 

Joseph  Knight  had  by  this  time  introduced  the 
poet  to  Mr.  John  Morley  (now  Viscount  Morley 
of  Blackburn),  who  had  just  achieved  a  dis- 
tinguished success  with  his  first  book,  Edmund 
Burke,  and  who  was  then  editing  the  Fortnightly 
Review.  Swinburne  was  very  anxious  to  find 
some  channel  through  which  to  pour  the  con- 
victions and  expose  the  erudition  which  he  had 
formed  in  the  intense  intellectual  labour  of  the 
last  eight  years.  He  had  long  fretted  at  his 
inability  to  discover  an  editor  for  his  critical 
prose.  Morley  opened  the  pages  of  his  review 
to  this  brilliant  and  audacious  admirer  of  all 
beautiful  things,  and  Swinburne's  articles  in  the 
Fortnightly  became  a  very  remarkable  ele- 
ment in  current  literature.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  in  them  he  invented  a  new  class  of 
writing,  new  at  least  in  England,  since  there  had 
been  in  France  since  1850  a  romantic  criticism 
of  high  importance.  Swinburne  owed  little 
or  nothing  to  Sainte-Beuve,  whom  he  never 
appreciated,  but  he  was  strongly  affected  by  the 
pictorial  manner  of  Gautier,  and  he  had  an  elder 
brother  after  his  own  heart  in  Paul  de  Saint- 
Victor.  Like  the  studies  of  the  latter,  Swin- 
burne's early  monographs  are  impetuous  and 
inflamed    impressions    of    literature    which    has 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC         169 

either  filled  the  critic  with  transports  of  admira- 
tion, or,  on  rarer  occasions,  with  equally  violent 
transports  of  anger  and  scorn.  For  the  first 
time  in  English  literature,  an  attempt  was  here 
made  to  produce  a  concrete  and  almost  plastic 
conception  of  the  work  of  an  author,  not  minutely 
analysed  or  coldly  condensed,  but  presented  as 
if  by  an  inspired  neophyte,  proclaiming  a  religion 
in  an  ecstasy.  Such,  in  1867,  were  the  "William 
Morris"  and  the  "Matthew  Arnold"  of  Swin- 
burne, and  the  sensation  they  caused  was  rever- 
berant. To  all  young  sestheticians  of  that  and 
the  next  few  years,  the  advent  of  the  Fort- 
nightly Review  with  a  critical  article  by  Swin- 
burne in  it  was  looked  forward  to  as  to  a  great 
event. 

In  the  summer  he  was  "in  the  honourable 
agonies  of  portrait-sitting  —  to  Watts."  This  was 
the  picture  now  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 
The  gratified  model  wrote  (May  23,  1867) ; 

Of  course  it  is  a  great  honour  for  me  to  be  asked  to 
sit  to  him,  now  especially  that  he  accepts  no  commissions 
and  paints  portraits  only  for  three  reasons,  —  friendship, 
beauty  and  celebrity;  having  the  "world"  at  his  feet 
begging  to  be  painted.  But  it  takes  time  and  trouble, 
and  he  won't  let  me  crop  my  hair,  whose  curls  the  British 
public  (unlike  Titian's)  reviles  aloud  in  the  streets.  II  faut 
souffrir  pour  etre  —  peint,  but  the  portrait  is  a  superb 
picture  already,  in  spite  of  the  model,  and  up  to  the 
Venetian  standard,  by  the  admission  of  other  artists,  — 
a  more  than  fair  test. 

He  spent  an  unusually  long  time  in  London 
this  year,  with  more  than  the  customary  ill  effect 


170    ALGERNON  CHARLES  S\YINBURNE 

upon  his  health.  Several  recurrences  of  his 
nervous  malady  should  have  warned  him  of 
the  danger,  but  he  continued  to  live  at  highest 
pressure,  in  a  round  of  intellectual  fervour 
relieved  only  by  "racketing."  At  length,  on  the 
13th  of  July  1867,  when  at  breakfast  with  a  large 
party  at  Lord  Houghton's  town-house,  Swinburne 
was  attacked  by  a  seizure  much  more  violent 
than  he  had  ever  suffered  from  before.  Admiral 
Swinburne  was  telegraphed  to,  and  came  up  to 
town,  bringing  with  him  the  family  physician. 
Dr.  Alison ;  they  found  Algernon  already  con- 
scious, under  the  care  of  a  specialist  whom  Lord 
Houghton  had  called  in.  He  was  removed  at 
once  to  his  chambers,  and  next  day  had  recovered 
enough  to  be  taken  down  to  Holmwood.  The 
prospect  seemed  dark,  but  the  poet  revived  as 
soon  as  he  got  home.  A  fortnight  later  he  was 
quite  well  again.  The  Admiral  wrote  to  Lord 
Houghton  (July  28),  "Algernon  has  fallen  will- 
ingly into  regular  hours  and  habits,  as  he  always 
does  when  he  is  with  us.  He  is  tractable  and 
willing  to  do  everything  that  is  required  of  him. 
It  cannot  be  expected,  and  therefore  is  not  in- 
sisted upon,  that  his  mental  faculties  should  lie 
fallow,  but  we  do  all  we  can  to  keep  them  tranquil. 
We  feel  him  to  be  safe  while  he  is  here." 

A  fortnight  later  still  (Aug.  13),  Swinburne 
writes,  in  fully-regained  high  spirits:  "My  last 
attack  was,  they  say,  of  a  really  dangerous  kind, 
and  I  am  prescribed  a  torpor  of  mind  and  body  for 
months."  The  remainder  of  this  letter  shows  no 
trace  of  mental  "torpor."  *'My  Mother  is  very 
urgent  with  me  not  to  move  or  make  the  least 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC  171 

change  in  my  habits."  This  means  that  while  the 
Admiral  was  of  opinion  that  Algernon  ought  to 
break  with  London  altogether,  and  live  at  home, 
Lady  Jane  had  yielded  to  Algernon's  vehement 
persuasions,  and  thought  that,  under  promise  of 
complete  reform,  he  might  still  keep  on  his 
lodgings  in  town.  So  ended  the  most  serious 
of  all  Swinburne's  attacks,  and  the  one  which 
gave  the  most  poignant  alarm.  It  was  very 
curious  that,  even  in  this  extreme  instance,  as 
soon  as  he  came  out  of  his  long  death-like  trance, 
he  felt  neither  pain  nor  sickness,  although  for 
some  days  he  was  feeble  and  languid. 

Swinburne  now  settled  quietly  at  Holmwood 
for  a  period  of  several  months,  calm,  cheerful, 
and  active.  A  pleasa,nt  and  friendly  neighbour 
was  Sir  Robert  Phillimore  (1810-1885),  the 
eminent  jurist.  Ultimately  the  doctor  gave  per- 
mission for  Swinburne  to  share  the  lodgings  of  a 
friend,  on  a  pledge  of  being  "as  regular"  there 
as  at  home.  The  "lodgings"  were  apartments 
taken  by  George  Powell  in  a  small  house  in 
Etretat,  in  Normandy,  where  the  friends  were 
visited  two  or  three  times  by  Mr.  Lindo  Myers, 
who  was  then  living  at  Havre  in  connection  with 
the  Maritime  Exhibition  held  there  in  1867. 

On  one  occasion  Mr.  Myers  spent  several  days 
with  the  friends  at  Etretat,  and  Swinburne  then 
showed  him  some  proofs  of  the  poems  which  Miss 
Adah  Isaacs  Menken  (1835-1868)  published  early 
in  1868  under  the  title  of  Infelicia.  Swinburne 
had  recently  made  the  acquaintance  in  London 
of  this  actress,  famous  for  her  performance  of 
"Mazeppa."     Swinburne    told    Mr.    Myers    that 


172  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Adah  Menken  had  sent  the  poems  to  him  from 
Paris  to  look  over,  and  that  "not  only  had  he 
done  that,  but  thought  he  had  improved  some  of 
the  lines  considerably."  This  settles  the  absurd 
legend  which  was  long  circulated  in  Grub  Street 
that  Injclicia  was  really  written  by  Swin- 
burne, from  whom,  without  acknowledgment,  is 
borrowed  the  quatrain : 

Leaves  pallid  and  sombre  and  ruddy. 

Dead  fruits  of  the  fugitive  years ; 
Some  stained  as  with  wine  and  made  bloody. 
And  some  as  with  tears. 

On  the  28th  of  September,  Swinburne  returned 
to  England,  travelling  by  the  midnight  boat 
from  Havre  to  Southampton,  in  company  with 
Mr.  Lindo  Myers,  who  has  given  me  a  very 
diverting  account  of  the  voyage. 

Swinburne  went  back  immediately  to  Holm- 
wood.  Then  followed  a  time  of  serene  and 
wholesome  activity,  during  which  Swinburne 
read  the  poetry  of  two  dead  and  three  living 
languages  with  thirsty  zeal,  prepared  under 
Mazzini's  guidance  for  his  celebration  of  the 
Republic,  and  sketched  out,  and  even  began,  the 
majestic  series  of  political  poems  which  was 
to  engage  the  best  of  his  attention  for  the 
next  three  years.  In  the  autumn  of  this  year 
was  published  A  Song  of  Italy,  loudly  heralded 
by  Hotten  as  a  new  masterpiece  by  the  author 
of  Poems  and  Ballads^  and  rashly  issued  in  a  first 
edition  of  some  3000  copies.  Its  reception  by 
the  public  was  disappointing.  Readers,  who 
had  hoped  for  a  wilder  "Faustine"  or  a  more 
abandoned  "Dolores,"  refused  to  buy  this  verbose 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC         173 

manifesto  of  Italian  republicanism ;  thirty  years 
afterwards  the  original  edition  was  not  yet  ex- 
hausted. It  was  made  the  excuse  for  an  out- 
rageously violent  attack  in  the  Saturday  Review 
on  Swinburne's  poetry  in  general,  by  a  Catholic 
journalist  named  H.  N.  Oxenham,  who  was 
driven  to  frenzy  by  what  he  called  the  "fanatical 
paradox"  of  the  poet's  republicanism. 

Even  the  best  admirers  of  Swinburne  were! 
somewhat  disconcerted  by  A  Song  of  Italy,  in  1 
spite  of  the  magic  of  the  versification  and  the 
dignity  and  rapture  of  the  language.  He  had 
chosen  a  metre  used,  and  perhaps  invented,  by 
Landor,  a  truncated  couplet  which  is  appropriate 
to  a  short  lyric,  but  which  becomes  intolerably 
fatiguing  in  a  work  of  nearly  seventy  pages. 
Moreover,  the  whole  composition  was  vociferous 
and  yet  vague,  while  a  fault,  which  had  been 
observed  before  as  waylaying  Swinburne's  feet, 
was  here  found  to  have  completely  ensnared 
him,  namely,  the  temptation  to  go  on  and  on  at 
the  free  will  of  his  rhetoric  in  no  particular 
direction.  A  Song  of  Italy,  written  before  Maz- 
zini  had  undertaken  the  English  bard's  political 
education,  is  amorphous  and  sometimes  scarcely 
intelligible ;  in  point  of  lucidity  it  compares 
unfavourably  with  the  noble  pieces  —  odes, 
clarion-cries  and  what  not  —  which  Swinburne 
was  presently  to  roll  out  in  greeting  of  the  repub- 
lican sunrise.  The  principal  charm  of  A  Song  of 
Italy  now  resides  in  its  exquisite  vignettes  of  little 
Tuscan  towns  that  the  author  had  seen  four  years 
before  during  his  brief  Italian  journey,  such  as 
this  of  Siena : 


174    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

Thou  too,  O  little  laurelled  town  of  towers. 

Clothed  with  the  flame  of  flowers, 
From  windy  ramparts  girdled  with  young  gold. 

From  thy  sweet  hill-side  fold 
Of  wallflowers,  and  the  acacia's  belted  bloom 

And  every  blowing  plume. 

The  whole  of  the  long  ode  or  rhapsody  might 
really  be  condensed  into  this  charge  to  Italia : 

O  mystic  rose  ingrained  with  blood,  impearled 

With  tears  of  all  the  world  ! 
The  torpor  of  their  blind  brute-ridden  trance 

Kills  England  and  chills  France ; 
And  Spain  sobs  hard  through  strangling  blood ;    and  snows 

Hide  the  huge  eastern  woes. 
But  thou,  twin-born  with  morning,  nursed  of  noon, 

And  blessed  of  sun  and  moon  ! 
What  shall  avail  to  assail  thee  any  more, 

From  sacred  shore  to  shore  ? 

The  British  public,  still  dominated,  in  those 
Podsnapian  days,  with  an  equal  respect  for  kings 
and  scorn  for  foreigners,  failed  to  perceive  the 
point,  and  it  was  even  less  attracted  by  a  pamphlet 
of  verse,  an  Appeal  to  England  against  the  execu- 
tion of  the  Manchester  Fenians,  which  Swinburne 
circulated  late  in  1867.  This,  however,  is  a 
political  poem  of  great  merit,  direct,  intelligible, 
and  brief,  written  in  language  of  high  simplicity. 
The  Appeal,  which  is  rather  to  England  for  mercy 
than  in  commendation  of  the  condemned  Fenians 
in  particular,  is  remarkable  because  Swinburne 
never  repeated  his  defence  of  Ireland  or  hinted 
again  at  an  Irish  republic ;  and  also  because  it 
has  a  very  fine  passage  in  celebration  of  the 
United  States,  a  country  otherwise  scarcely 
mentioned  in  all  the  poet's  writings. 


SONGS   OF   THE   REPUBLIC         175 

The  Appeal  scandalised  the  reviewers,  but 
it  had  one  interesting  result.  The  Reform 
League,  then  a  body  of  some  influence,  solicited 
the  poet  to  enter  Parliament,  offering  to  ensure 
his  seat  and  pay  his  expenses.  They  took  this 
step  on  the  ground  that  Swinburne  was  repre- 
sentative of  more  advanced  or  republican  opinions 
than  any  member  of  the  existing  House  of 
Commons.  The  poet,  excessively  gratified,  but 
conscious  that  never  in  his  life  had  he  "felt  any 
ambition  for  any  work  or  fame  but  a  poet's, 
except,  indeed,  while  yet  a  boy,  for  a  soldier's," 
very  wisely  applied  to  Mazzini  for  advice.  The 
Italian  patriot  at  once  instructed  him  to  refuse 
the  invitation ;  telling  him  that  he  had  other 
service  to  do.  Swinburne  was  greatly  relieved 
when  he  found  he  could  dismiss  the  application 
with  a  wholly  clear  conscience,  and  thus  ended 
his  one  and  only  episode  on  the  brink  of  public 
affairs.  One  cannot  imagine  him  in  the  House 
of  Commons ;  he  would  have  been  a  portent  of 
ineffectuality  in  a  place  where  even  John  Stuart 
Mill  was  little  better  than  a  failure. 

A  little  puzzle  of  bibliography  must  here  be 
noted.  An  examination  of  the  original  MSS.  of 
the  Dirae  in  Mr.  Wise's  possession  shows  that 
these  sonnets  were  not  written  at  one  time,  but 
at  two  different  periods,  separated  by  several 
years.  When  Swinburne  published  the  whole 
series,  the  four  terrific  sonnets  called  "Inter- 
cession," — 

O  Death,  a  little  more,  and  then  the  worm,  — 

praying  for  lingering   torments   to   consume   the 


176    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

miserable  Louis  Napoleon,  were  dated  "Paris: 
September  1869."  It  is  apparent,  however,  that 
they  were  written  earlier,  for  in  a  letter  of 
February  5,  1868,  writing  from  Holmwood,  Swin- 
burne says : 

I  have  had  a  very  jolly  note  from  Victor  Hugo.  .  ,  . 
The  Master  approves  highly  of  my  sonnets  of  intercession 
for  "our  mutual  friend"  [Napoleon  III.],  calling  them 
"strophes  magnifiques," 

It  seems  that  he  must  have  sent  to  Hugo, 
who  was  in  Guernsey,  the  manuscript  of  those 
sonnets,  or  an  early  draft  of  one  or  more  of  them, 
early  in  1868,  although  he  did  not  completely 
revise  the  set  until  eighteen  months  later.  Un- 
fortunately "Intercession"  is  missing  from 
among  Mr.  Wise's  MSS. 

Throughout  the  early  months  of  1868,  he  was 
wholly  absorbed  in  writing  what  was  eventually 
to  be  collected  as  Songs  before  Sunrise.  In  April  he 
wrote  "Tiresias";  in  June  he  published  "Siena." 
The  magnificent  "Prologue"  to  the  volume  of 
1871  clearly  betrays  what  was  passing  through 
his  mind  in  this  period  of  rapturous  creative 
energy.  We  can  hardly  question  that  it  was  now, 
at  the  opening  of  this  thirty-second  year,  that  he 
felt  most  ecstatically  tJie^  ripeness  and  magnitude 
of  his  lyric  powers.  /  His  intellect  was  at  its 
zenith ;  he  was  capable,  as  rarely  before,  and  still 
more  rarely  afterwards,  of  clothing  his  thought 
with  the  most  sumptuous  and  most  radiant  veils 
of  imagination,  and  yet^of  retaining  his  command 
over  its  movement  .v/ln  other  times  and  cases 
we  find  Swinburne  the^lave  of  his  own  splendours. 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC         177 

carried  whither  he  would  not  by  the  Pythian 
intoxication  of  words.  But  this  is  not  the  case 
in__tjie  finest  pages  of  Sonas  before  Siynrisip.  an  A 
fine  pages  in  that  book  are  as  leaves  in  Vallam- 
brosa^In  *'Hertha,"  in  *'The  Pilgrims,"  in 
*'Tir^ias,"  we  are  surprised  to  discover  the  most 
rapturous  of  troubadours  transformed  into  one 
of  the  great  poetic  intelligences  of  the  modern  "~ 
worldJ  j^l^ziU'^^'Ji^Uc^^^'^  ^^  ^>>^^^^^^^^u 

A  passage  from  a  private  letter  may  be  quoted 
at  this  place.  On  the  17th  of  April  1868,  Swin- 
burne, after  saying  that  *' illness  hardly  inter- 
mittent during  weeks  and  months  of  weather 
which  would  have  disgraced  hell  and  raised  a 
revolution  among  the  devils,"  has  yet  been 
steadily  at  work  on  what  was  later  known  as 
Songs  before  Sunrise: 

I  have  lots  of  work  in  embryo,  and  some  already 
born.  I  have  such  a  subject  before  me,  untouched  — 
Tiresias  at  the  grave  of  Antigone  —  i.e.  (understand), 
Dante  at  the  grave  of  Italia.  I  do  not  say  the  living  heir 
and  successor  of  Dante  as  a  patriot,  for  he  sees  her  slowly  but 
hopefully  rising,  though  with  pain  and  shame  and  labour. 
My  beloved  chief  [Mazzini]  is  still  with  us,  very  ill  and  in- 
domitable, and  sad  and  kind  as  ever. 

All  this  labour,  all  the  fury  and  flame  of  in- 
tellectual productivity,  could  not  be  indulged 
in  without  manifest  danger  to  his  health.  A 
long  stay  in  London  was  once  more  disastrous, 
and  his  epileptic  attacks  recurred.  By  a  distress- 
ing chance,  it  was  during  one  of  these  fits  that 
the  writer  of  these  pages  first  cast  eyes  upon  the 
poet  who  was  later  to  honour  him  with  his  friend- 
ship.    The  circumstances  were  terrifying  in  the 


178  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

extreme.  It  was  on  the  9th  of  July,  1868,  rather 
late  in  the  afternoon.  Swinburne  had  fallen 
in  a  fit  while  working  in  the  reading-room  of 
the  British  Museum,  and  had  cut  his  forehead 
superficially  against  the  iron  staple  of  the  desk.  I 
was  walking  along  a  corridor  when  I  was  passed 
by  a  couple  of  silent  attendants  rapidly  carrying 
along  in  a  chair  what  seemed  to  be  a  dead  man. 
I  recognised  him  instantly  from  his  photographs 
which  now  filled  the  shop  windows.  His  hanging 
hands,  closed  eyelids,  corpse-white  face,  and  red 
hair  dabbled  in  blood  presented  an  appearance  of 
the  utmost  horror,  but  I  learned  a  few  days  later 
that  his  recovery  was  rapid  and  complete. 

An  illness  of  his  mother's  again  delayed  him,  but 
as  soon  as  he  could  get  away,  he  again  joined 
Powell,  who  now  had  rented  a  villa  near  Etretat, 
and  Swinburne  did  not  return  till  the  weather 
began  to  grow  chilly  in  November.  To  this 
residence,  which  has  since  disappeared,  Powell 
gave  the  preposterous  name  of  Dolmance,  and 
Jean  Lorrain,  who  visited  it  later,  has  described 
it  as  standing : 

en  plein  verger  de  fleurs,  une  vraie  ehaumiere  a  toil  de 
chaume,  au  beau  milieu  d'un  preau  de  pommiers :  tout 
a  Ten  tour  de  profondes  cavees,  ces  sortes  des  chemins 
creux,  ombrages  et  toujours  frais,  meme  au  moment  de 
la  canicule,  que  forment  en  Normandie  les  hauts  talus, 
plantes  de  hetres.  L'endroit  est  calme,  en  pleine  vallee, 
deja  loin  de  la  mer. 

The  poet  indulged  to  his  fill  in  his  favourite 
pastime  of  sea-bathing,  so  recklessly  indeed  that 
in  the  early  part  of  October,  1868,  he  was  very 
nearly  drowned  by  being  carried  out  to  sea  on  the 


SONGS  OF   THE   REPUBLIC         179 

tide  that  was  setting  from  the  Porte  d'Amont. 
He  was  never  a  powerful  swimmer,  in  consequence 
of  the  weakness  of  his  arms,  but  he  was  untiring, 
and  accustomed  to  relieve  his  limbs  by  frequently 
floating.  He  had  however  nearly  reached  the 
limits  of  his  endurance  when  he  was  sighted 
by  a  fishing-vessel,  the  Marie  Marthe,  which 
was  making  for  Yport,  where  the  poet  was 
ultimately  landed,  wrapped  in  a  sail.^  An  in- 
quisitive and  precocious  collegian,  home  for  the 
holidays,  offered  his  services  and  was  received 
by  the  English  friends.  This  was  Guy  de 
Maupassant,  who  has  left  an  account  of  Swin- 
burne's appearance  and  manner  at  this  time, 
which,  if  highly  colored,  is  of  extreme  value. 
Offenbach  also  visited  Powell  and  Swinburne  at 
Etretat. 

In  describing  to  me  a  few  years  later  the 
episode  of  his  being  nearly  drowned  at  Etretat, 
Swinburne  said  that  as  he  floated  to  his  death, 
as  he  supposed,  he  reflected  with  satisfaction 
that  his  republican  poems  were  nearly  ready  for 
the  press,  and  that  Mazzini  would  "be  pleased 
with"  him.  The  natural  meaning  of  this  state- 
ment is  that  the  collection  ultimately  called 
Songs  before  Sunrise  was  practically  complete 
as  early  as  October  1868,  and  we  have  already 
seen  that  large  portions  of  it  were  written  and 
revised  by  that  time,  although  other  pieces  of 
importance  were  added  sporadically  during  the 
next  two  years  and  a  half.  The  indications  of 
date  in  the  poems  themselves  are  of  a  very  illusive 

^  In  my  Portraits  and  Sketches  (1912),  I  gave,  for  the  first  time,  a  full 
account  of  this  curious  episode. 


180  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

kind.  But  it  is  believed  that  "Hertha,"  perhaps 
the  most  original  and  powerful  of  all  Swin- 
burne's lyrical  writings,  was  composed  in  the 
course  of  1868. 

On  returning  from  Etretat,  at  any  rate,  he 
seems  to  have  given  the  over-trumpeted  Republic 
a  quiet  interval.  He  brought  out  at  last  his 
bulky  prose  volume,  so  long  delayed,  on  William 
Blake.  It  was  from  the  Rossettis,  and  as  soon 
as  Algernon  came  into  close  relation  with  them, 
that  he  first  heard  of  that  painter-poet.  The 
name  of  the  visionary  was  already  a  shibboleth 
among  the  Pre-Raphaelites.  D.  G.  Rossetti  had 
bought,  so  long  back  as  1847,  a  book  of  Blake's 
drawings  and  MS.  verses,  and  the  great  interest 
which  he  and  his  brother  had  ever  since  taken 
in  the  subject  was  crystallised  by  the  labours  of 
their  friend,  Alexander  Gilchrist,  who,  having 
published  a  good  Life  of  Etty,  settled  down  to 
the  far  more  difficult  task  of  preparing  a  Life  of 
Blake.  Gilchrist  died,  still  young,  in  1861,  and 
left  this  work  unfinished ;  it  was  completed  by 
his  widow,  Anne  Gilchrist,  with  the  help  of 
the  Rossettis.  Swinburne  was  taken  into  every- 
body's confidence  about  Gilchrist's  book,  which 
appeared,  at  last,  in  two  handsome  volumes  in 
1863 ;  it  still  marks  a  stage  in  the  progress  of 
art-criticism. 

Swinburne's  William  Blake,  which  was  five 
years  in  hand,  began,  as  a  review  of  Gil- 
christ's posthumous  work,  before  he  started 
for  Italy  in  February  1864.  At  Florence,  his 
conversations  with  Blake's  old  friend,  Seymour 
Kirkup,    modified    Swinburne's    views    on    some 


SONGS  OF  THE  REPUBLIC         181 

points.  His  review  remained  unprinted,  and 
gradually  expanded  into  a  massive  monograph. 
As  he  went  on,  and  in  the  process  of  examining 
anew  the  MS.  lyrics  and  the  Prophetic  Books  of 
Blake,  Swinburne's  opinions  underwent  consider- 
able further  change,  and  this  is  felt  in  the  texture 
of  his  book  as  it  now  stands. 

The  William  Blake,  however,  despite  this 
disadvantage,  is  a  work  of  high  enthusiasm  and 
solid  erudition,  which  must  always  be  read  with 
respect,  whatever  new  lights  are  projected  on  the 
art  of  Blake.  It  carried  the  just  appreciation  of 
his  marvellous  gifts  much  further  on  than  the 
praiseworthy  labours  of  the  Gilchrists  had  done. 
Swinburne  was  the  first  critic  to  refrain  from 
apologising  for  Blake  as  an  eccentric  or  lunatic 
person  with  flashes  of  genius ;  he  claimed  sys- 
tematic appreciation  for  his  productions  at  large. 
The  two  most  novel  features  of  Swinburne's 
criticism  were  his  analysis  of  Blake's  mysticism 
and  his  laborious  and  illuminating  examination 
of  the  Prophetic  Books,  which  even  the  most 
initiated  admirers  had  up  to  that  time  rejected 
as  impenetrable.  D.  G.  Rossetti  himself  at- 
tempted to  dissuade  Swinburne  from  what  he 
condemned  as  labour  lost,  but  Swinburne  showed 
firmness  as  well  as  acumen  in  insisting  on  his 
defence  of  these  difficult  compositions.  He  wrote  : 
*'I  am  bound  to  register  my  protest  against  the 
contempt  and  condemnation  which  these  Books 
have  incurred,  thinking  them,  as  I  do,  not 
unworthy  the  trouble  of  commentary,"  and  the 
verdict  of  the  best  subsequent  criticism  has  been 
wholly  on  his   side.     Gilchrist  had  expressed   a 


182  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

wish  that  the  old  man  who  appears  entering  an 
open  door,  star  in  hand,  at  the  beginning  of 
Blake's  Jerusalem,  could  be  induced  to  guide  us 
through  "those  infinite  dark  passages  and  laby- 
rinthine catacombs  of  invention,"  which  such 
books  as  The  Marriage  of  Heaven  and  Hell  present 
to  us.  Swinburne  very  pertinently  replies  that, 
as  this  is  impossible,  we  had  best  apply  our  minds 
to  finding  out  a  pathway  for  ourselves. 

At  the  close  of  this  year,  Swinburne  undertook 
to  make  a  selection  from  Coleridge's  Poems, 
and  to  write  a  critical  essay.  Of  the  latter 
enterprise  he  wrote  (Dec.  21,  1868):  "It  will 
be  a  more  congenial  labour  to  me  than  the 
Selection  from  Byron,  who  is  not  made  for 
selection  —  Coleridge  is.  In  my  eyes  his  good 
poems  have  no  fault,  his  bad  poems  no  merit ; 
and  to  disengage  these  from  those  will  be  a 
pleasure  to  me." — He  performed  the  task  with 
remarkable  skill,  and  laid  down  for  the  first 
time,  with  complete  courage,  the  lines  which 
have  been  accepted  ever  since  by  the  best  judges 
of  this  capricious  and  difficult,  but  extremely 
fascinating  poet.  At  Christmas  1868  Swinburne 
paid  his  first,  and  perhaps  his  only,  visit  to  Cam- 
bridge, being  entertained  in  college  by  a  kindred 
spirit,  Bendysshe  of  King's. 

In  February  1869  Swinburne  wrote  to  a 
friend:  "I  have  been  busy  upon  my  new  book, 
and  have  done  a  good  deal  of  work,  but  not 
yet  finished,  though  I  see  land,  and  most  of  the 
poems  I  read  to  you  when  unfinished  are  now 
complete  or  nearly.  ...  I  have  written  a  modern 
companion-in-arms-and-metre   to   my    'Hymn   to 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC         183 

Proserpine,'  called  'Hymn  of  Man'  (during 
the  session  in  Rome  of  the  (Ecumenical  Council), 
by  the  side  of  which  Queen  Mab  is  as  it  were  an 
archdeacon's  charge,  and  my  own  previous  blas- 
phemies are  models  of  Christian  devotion."  In 
the  spring  of  that  year,  after  some  quiet  months 
at  Holmwood  and  Oxford,  visits  to  Jowett  at 
Balliol  College  and  to  Mr.  Julian  Field  at  Merton 
College,  Swinburne  came  again  to  London.  He 
had  given  up  his  rooms  in  Dorset  Street,  and 
after  a  long  interval  took  fresh  ones  at  12  North 
Crescent,  Bedford  Square,  where  he  was  to 
live  when  in  town  for  the  next  four  years  and 
a  half.  He  was  now  suffering  from  reaction  after 
the  very  intense  and  prolonged  excitement  in 
which  he  had  indulged,  and  he  endured  a  good 
deal  of  discomfort  from  languor  and  irritability. 
This  was  not  a  happy  period  in  his  life,  and  it 
was  not  a  fertile  one.  After  the  immense  activity 
and  productivity  of  the  three  preceding  years, 
1869  and  1870  have  very  little  to  show.  He 
wrote  critical  articles  for  the  Fortnightly  Re- 
view, and  he  composed  at  least  one  important 
poem,  "The  Eve  of  Revolution,"  which  seems 
to  have  been  finished  at  Holmwood  in  July  of 
the  first-named  year.  A  review  of  UHomme  qui 
rit  brought  from  Victor  Hugo  a  characteristic 
letter  (July  14,  1869) :  —  "Merci,  ex  imo  corde,  de 
votre  magnifique  travail  sur  mon  livre.  Quelle 
haute  philosophic,  et  quelle  intuition  profonde 
vous  avez !  Dans  le  grand  critique,  on  sent  le 
grand  poete."  A  scheme  to  bring  out  a  volume 
of  republican  poems  in  that  autumn  fell  through. 
Richard  Burton,  who  was  now  appointed  British 


184  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

consul  at  Damascus,  returned  from  Brazil  to 
London,  in  rather  poor  health ;  he  was  advised 
to  take  a  course  of  the  Vichy  waters  before 
proceeding  to  Syria.  He  proposed  that  Swin- 
burne, who  was  already  at  Etretat,  should 
join  him  at  Boulogne.  This  was  done,  and 
the  friends  arrived  at  Vichy  on  the  24th  of  July 
1869.  Five  days  later  the  poet  wrote:  "Vichy 
suits  me  splendidly,"  and  indeed  he  was  now 
entering  upon  some  of  the  most  completely 
happy  moments  of  his  life.  He  delighted  in  the 
breezy  company  of  Burton,  and  at  Vichy  they 
found  two  other  friends,  Frederic  Leighton  and 
Adelaide  Kemble  (Mrs.  Sartoris).  Mrs.  Sartoris 
sang  to  the  friends,  and  her  voice  was  still  "in 
the  days  of  its  glory."  Swinburne,  unskilled  as 
he  was  in  all  the  technical  part  of  music,  confessed 
her  singing  to  be  "miraculous  and  ravishing." 
A  quarter  of  a  century  later  he  declared  that  it 
was  still  vibrating  in  his  brain.  The  memory 
of  this  enchanting  encounter  was  celebrated  by 
Swinburne  in  1896,  when,  on  hearing  of  Lord 
Leigh  ton's  death,  he  wrote  the  poem  called  "An 
Evening  at  Vichy." 

While  he  was  thus  enjoying  himself,  he  was 
lifted  into  the  seventh  heaven  by  an  invitation 
from  Victor  Hugo,  whose  UHomme  qui  rit  he 
had  rapturously  reviewed  in  the  current  number 
of  the  Fortnightly^  to  come  and  visit  him  at 
Hauteville  House  in  Guernsey.  This  came  to 
nothing,  but  he  made  some  stay  in  Paris,  where 
he  met  Paul  de  Saint-Victor  and  perhaps  Louis 
Blanc ;  while  in  the  late  autumn  he  seems  to 
have  spent  several  weeks  in  the  neighbourhood 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC         185 

of  Grenoble.  He  had  more  correspondence  with 
Victor  Hugo  who,  on  the  17th  of  November, 
called  the  attention  of  Paul  Maurice  to  Swin- 
burne's high  merits.  "M.  Swinburne,"  Hugo 
now  wrote,  "est  celui  que  Louis  Blanc  qualifiait 
dernierement  dans  Le  Temps:  le  'premier  poete 
anglais  actual .'^  Swinburne  was  beginning  to 
enjoy  a  "European  reputation,"  or  Victor  Hugo 
would  not  have  recommended  a  translation  "en 
tout  ou  en  partie"  of  his  articles  in  Le  Rappel. 
On  his  return  to  this  country  Swinburne  had  the 
happiness  of  seeing  Mazzini  again  during  his 
last  brief  visit  to  England,  and  the  pride  of 
conducting  him  to  the  house  on  Clapham 
Common  of  Swinburne's  excellent  Greek  friends, 
the  Spartalis,  whose  acquaintance  he  had  made 
at  Madox  Brown's  house.  At  Clapham  Common, 
too,  he  met  Ricciotti  Garibaldi.  In  the  winter 
he  paid  a  short  visit  to  George  Meredith  at 
Kingston. 

Little  marks  the  next  year,  1870,  except  a 
very  elaborate  criticism,  "reviewing  the  un- 
born" Poems  of  D.  G.  Rossetti,  of  which,  in 
sending  the  MS.  to  John  Morley  on  the  15th  of 
April,  Swinburne  said:  "I  have  now  touched  on 
every  poem  —  in  fact  given  a  thorough  and  most 
careful  analysis  of  the  whole  book.  I  never  took 
so  much  pains  in  my  life  with  any  prose  piece  of 
work."  He  seems  to  have  been  at  Etretat  again 
in  the  summer,  for  the  last  time ;  the  outbreak 
of  the  war  sent  the  friends  flying  back  to  England. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  he  wrote  the  sonnets  on 
Armand  Barbes,  who  had  died  at  the  Hague  in 
June.     Swinburne  was  already  safe  in  England 


186     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

when  the  French  Republic  was  proclaimed  by 
Gambetta,  Ferry  and  Favre  in  Paris,  on  the  4th  of 
September.  He  instantly  hailed  the  formation  of 
the  government  of  National  Defence  as  the  arrival 
of  a  French  millennium,  and  within  two  days  he 
had  composed  and  sent  to  press  his  long  Ode  on 
the  Proclamation  of  the  French  Republic. 

Swinburne's  business  relations  with  J.  C. 
Hotten  since  1866  had  not  been  happy.  There 
was  recriminator}^  correspondence  about  the 
number  of  copies  printed  and  sold.  A  new 
publisher  now  appeared,  in  the  person  of  Mr. 
F.  S.  Ellis  (1830-1901),  a  friend  of  the  whole 
Pre-Raphaelite  circle,  a  man  of  the  highest 
integrity,  and  an  enthusiastic  admirer,  who 
promised  the  poets  a  brilliant  format  for  their 
works.  He  was  in  partnership  with  Mr.  G.  M. 
Green,  who  died  in  1872.  Swinburne  was 
strongly  urged  to  transfer  his  earlier  books  to 
this  new  firm,  but  Hotten  refused  to  surrender 
them,  and  threatened  to  go  to  law.  Howell 
may,  or  may  not,  have  arranged  the  matter  very 
tactfully,  but  he  was  certainly  to  be  sympathised 
with  when  he  learned  (Sept.  9)  that  Swinburne, 
without  consulting  him,  had  forwarded  the  Ode 
on  the  Proclamation  of  the  French  Republic  to 
Ellis,  and  had  already  seen  and  corrected  the 
proofs.  At  the  same  time,  Swinburne  promised 
Ellis  to  give  him  the  great  book  of  republican 
lyrics  which  was  now  almost  ready  for  the  press. 

The  publication  of  the  Ode  highly  incensed 
Hotten,  who  renewed  threats  of  legal  proceedings, 
based  on  conversations  the  accuracy  of  which 
Swinburne  denied.     Even  when  Songs  before  Sun- 


SONGS   OF   THE   REPUBLIC         187 

rise  was  in  type,  Ellis  hesitated  to  issue  the  book 
without  legal  sanction.  It  was  to  have  been  out 
in  October  1870,  but  Hotten  opposed  publication, 
saying  that  he  had  a  right  to  whatever  Swinburne 
produced.  A  counter-blow  was  struck  by  in- 
sisting that  Hotten  should  submit  his  accounts 
to  examination.  The  dispute,  which  was  costly 
and  annoying,  was  prolonged  into  November, 
when  it  was  submitted  to  the  arbitration  of 
Moy  Thomas,  who  smoothed  matters  over.  The 
quarrel  with  Hotten  broke  out  again  three  years 
later,  when  all  relations  between  him  and  Swin- 
burne closed.  But  Ellis  and  Green,  advised  by 
their  lawyers  that  they  might  now  safely  do  so, 
published  Songs  before  Sunrise  at  last  in  the  spring 
of  1871. 

Miss  Alice  Bird  recollects  Swinburne  arriving 
at  her  brother's  house  with  the  first  proofs  of 
Songs  before  Sunrise  in  his  pocket,  and  a  little 
later  in  the  evening  his  dancing  about  the  room 
convulsed  with  passion  while  he  half-read,  half- 
recited  them  to  her  brother  and  herself.  In 
particular,  those  in  which  Napoleon  III.  was 
denounced  he  repeated  with  such  violence,  and 
as  she  puts  it  amusingly  to  me,  "with  such 
poison,"  that  his  voice  sounded  like  the  hissing 
of  serpents,  while  he  jigged  round  the  room,  his 
hair  flying  out  behind  him,  and  his  arms  flapping 
and  fluttering  at  his  sides.  At  these  times, 
when  he  was  transfigured  by  excitement,  his 
wonderful  head  looked  like  that  of  a  young  god, 
if  only  the  weak  mouth  and  the  receding  chin 
could  be  ignored.  Directly  the  storm  of  melody 
was   over,    and   the   poem   put   away,    Algernon 


/ 


188    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

would  sink  down  on  a  sofa  with  the  gentleness 
of  a  child,  and  his  voice  would  immediately 
resume  its  rich,  soft  cadences. 

The  Ode  on  the  Proclamation  of  the  French 
Republic  came  out  at  a  moment  when  public 
interest  was  wholly  diverted  from  literature  by 
the  war,  and  it  produced  little  effect.  It  is  not 
one  of  Swinburne's  best  efforts,  and  it  lacks  con- 
tinuity and  plan.  The  opening  strophe,  with 
its  affluence  of  rhymes  like  peals  of  bells,  is  very 
beautiful,  but  this  rapture  leads  to  nothing,  it 
is  mere  frantic  ecstasy.  The  careful  reader  will 
note  in  the  Ode  occasional  direct  reminiscences 
of  Shelley,  such  as  are  very  rare  in  Swinburne ; 
but  he  had  been  studying  the  text  of  Shelley 
minutely  during  the  preceding  summer,  and  he 
was  always  something  of  a  chameleon.  Very 
little  knowledge  of  the  real  political  condition  of 
Europe  or  even  of  France  is  shown  in  the  Ode. 
Only  towards  the  close  of  the  epode  is  there  any 
recognition  of  the  actual  state  and  pressing  danger 
of  France;  like  many  other  people,  Swinburne 
thought  too  much  of  the  victory  at  Combieres. 
His  poem  had  not  been  four  months  in  the  hands 
of  his  readers  before  AVilliam  I.  was  crowned 
German  Emperor  in  the  Galerie  des  Glaces  of  the 
palace  of  Versailles.  Swinburne  averted  his  eyes 
completely  from  the  subsequent  history  of  Europe. 

The  earlier  portion  of  his  own  career  closes 
with  the  publication  of  Songs  before  Sunrise,  which 
is  probably,  —  from  a  point  of  view  detached 
from  the  attractiveness  of  subject,  —  Swinburne's 
cardinal  and  crowning  work.  Nowhere  else  has 
he  brought  together  so  much  lyrical  writing,  — 


SONGS   OF  THE   REPUBLIC         189 

and  he  was  pre-eminently  a  lyrist,  —  which  is 
uniformly  rapid  in  movement,  rich  in  thought, 
sumptuous  in  language,  and  uplifted  in  tone. 
There  are  superfluities  here,  but  they  are  less 
conspicuous  than  they  are  in  his  later  writings, 
while  there  is  a  total,  and  if  we  consider  it,  an 
extraordinary  absence  of  the  hectic  and  morbid 
ornament  which  had  been  at  once  the  charm  and 
the  danger  of  Poems  and  Ballads.  The  forty 
poems  of  which  the  new  volume  is  composed 
breathed  so  consistent  a  spirit  of  pure  self- 
sacrifice  and  impassioned  devotion  that  they 
amazed  the  admirers  of  "Felise"  and  "Dolores." 
In  his  "Prelude,"  one  of  the  noblest  exercises 
of  reasoned  imagination  which  exist  in  the 
English  language,  Swinburne  explained  the  causes 
of  the  change : 

A  little  time  we  gain  from  time 
To  set  our  seasons  in  some  chime, 

For  harsh  or  sweet  or  loud  or  low ; 

With  seasons  played  out  long  ago 
And  souls  that  in  their  time  and  prime 

Took  part  with  summer  or  with  snow. 
Lived  abject  lives  out  or  sublime, 

And  had  their  choice  of  seed  to  sow 
For  service  or  disservice  done 
To  those  days  dead  and  this  their  son. 

A  little  time  that  we  may  fill 

Or  with  such  good  works  or  such  ill 

As  loose  the  bonds  or  make  them  strong 

Wherein  all  manhood  suffers  wrong. 
By  rose-hung  river  and  light-foot  rill 

There  are  who  rest  not ;  who  think  long 
Till  they  discern  as  from  a  hill 

At  the  sun's  hour  of  morning-song. 
Known  of  souls  only  and  those  souls  free. 
The  sacred  spaces  of  the  sea. 


190  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

His  muse  had  been  "converted";  it  was  no 
longer  in  the  service  of  sensual  pleasure  and  of 
sloth ;  it  repudiated  the  gardens  of  Armida.  If 
other  poets  continued  to  "flush  with  love  and 
hide  in  flowers"  —  and  the  allusion  was  to  William 
Morris  and  his  Earthly  Paradise  —  Swinburne 
offered  no  blame : 

Play  then  and  sing ;  we  too  have  played, 

We  likewise,  in  that  subtle  shade. 

We  too  have  twisted  through  our  hair 
Such  tendrils  as  the  wild  Loves  wear, 

And  heard  what  mirth  the  Maenads  made,  — 
Till  the  winds  blew  our  garlands  bare, 

And  left  their  roses  disarrayed,  — 

the  winds  of  conviction  that  a  nobler  purpose 
than  idling  with  "Pleasure  slumberless  and  pale, 
and  Passion  with  rejected  veil,"  demands  the 
unfettered  energy  of  a  thinking  man  when  the 
first  dim  goddesses  of  instinct,  with  their  singing 
tongues  of  fire,  are  mute.  The  danger  of  sinking 
"helmless  in  middle  turn  of  tide"  lies  before 
the  soul  that  does  not  steer  resolutely  for  the 
direct  haven  of  duty,  and  what  "duty"  is  had 
now  revealed  itself  violently  to  the  heart  of 
Swinburne.  He  must  no  longer  live  for  himself, 
for  pleasure,  for  literature,  even  for  England,  but 
devote  all  the  forces  of  his  genius  to  celebrating 
the  "serene  Republic  of  a  world  made  white," 
and,  if  need  be,  to  die  for  it.  That  caricature 
of  him  which  Lady  Trevelyan  had  made  when  he 
was  a  boy,  striding  across  a  barricade,  might  have 
been  reproduced  as  a  vignette  to  Songs  before 
Sunrise. 

But,  after  the  passage  of  nearly  half  a  century, 


SONGS   OF  THE   REPUBLIC         191 

and  after  so  many  vicissitudes  of  European 
history,  the  subject  of  this  great  group  of  solemn 
and  generous  poems  is  one  which  miUtates  against 
our  intelHgent  enjoyment  of  them.  At  the  very 
outset,  the  Franco-German  War  disturbed  the 
scheme  of  the  poet  and  made  bankrupt  his  golden 
raptures.  Year  by  year,  crisis  by  crisis,  Europe 
was  carried  further  and  further  along  the  stream 
of  her  destiny,  and  wider  and  wider  from  the 
course  laid  down  with  emphatic  passion  in  such 
outbursts  of  prophecy  as  "The  Eve  of  Revolu- 
tion" or  "The  Litany  of  Nations."  It  is  difficult, 
and  even  before  the  close  of  1871  it  became 
almost  as  difficult  as  it  is  now,  to  enter  into  the 
delirium  of  instant  hope  of  such  a  poem  as  "Mater 
Triumphalis,"  or  to  appreciate  the  passion  for 
an  "immeasurable  Republic"  which  inspired 
"Quia  Multum  Amavit."  There  could  be  no 
doubt  that  Swinburne  loved  much,  but  when 
he  addressed  the  vague  spirit  of  republican 
Liberty  in  terms  which  a  penitent  might  adopt 
at  the  altar  of  his  God,  he  disconcerted  his  readers. 

Thou  art  the  player  whose  organ-keys  are  thunders. 
And  I  beneath  thy  foot  the  pedal  prest ; 

Thou  art  the  ray  whereat  the  rent  night  sunders. 
And  I  the  cloudlet  borne  upon  thy  breast, 

he  sings ;  and  our  appreciation  of  the  almost 
unparalleled  beauty  of  the  rhetoric  is  marred 
by  a  consciousness  that  this  Liberty  was  largely 
a  chimaera,  a  vain  fancy  of  the  poet's  own  un- 
selfish imagination. 

The  source  of  the  political  ardour  of  Swinburne 
and  the  form  taken  by  his  lyrical  apocalypse  are 
somewhat  obscure.     We  are  not  accustomed  in 


192  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

the  history  of  literature  to  find  a  poet  so  passion- 
ately excited  about  problems  of  statecraft  which 
do  not  affect  his  own  life  in  any  way,  and  with 
the  results  of  which  he  will  never  be  brought  in 
contact.  When  Tyrtaeus  or  Campbell  pours  forth 
battle-songs  it  is  because  he  is  a  Lacedaemonian 
or  an  Englishman,  and  is  personally  identified 
with  England  or  Sparta.  But  when  Swinburne 
writes  an  ode  to  the  bereaved  Signora  Cairoli  ^  in 
which  he  says : 

But  four  times  art  thou  blest. 
At  whose  most  holy  breast 
Four  times  a  God-like  soldier-saviour  hung ; 

or  when  he  addresses  Italy : 

The  very  thought  in  us  how  much  we  love  thee 
Makes  the  throat  sob  with  love  and  blinds  the  eyes, 

we  are  embarrassed  by  the  knowledge  that  he  had 
no  relations  and  hardly  any  acquaintances  in  a 
country  which  he  only  visited  twice,  as  a  tourist, 
for  a  few  weeks. 

There  is  a  similarity  of  emotional  political  utter- 
ance in  Songs  before  Sunrise  and  in  such  series  of 
recent  patriotic  canzoni  as  are  contained  in  the 
Elettra  or  the  Gesta  d'Oltremare  of  Gabriele  D'An- 
nunzio,  but  in  the  latter  case  it  is  an  Italian  who 
blows  the  clarion  of  a  new  dawn  in  his  own  Italy. 
It  is  certainly  strange  to  find  an  equal  ecstasy  in 
Swinburne,  who  was  not  a  participator,   but  a 

'  An  ode  to  her  son  Giovanni  Cairoli,  in  Carducci's  Giambi  ed  Epodi 
(1870)  may  be  compared  with  Swinburne's.  An  examination  of  the  two 
volumes,  almost  exactly  contemporaneous,  and  breathing  the  same  anger 
against  Napoleon  III.,  Austria,  and  the  priesthood,  would  be  interest- 
ing. Swinburne  seems  to  have  been,  and  to  have  remained,  unconscious 
of  the  existence  of  Carducci. 


SONGS   OF   THE   REPUBLIC         193 

spectator.  Yet  the  vehemence  of  the  passion  was 
absolutely  genuine,  and  it  was  overpowering.  But' 
this  apparent  causelessness  of  the  emotion,  and 
its  vain  violence  as  of  a  whirlwind  in  a  vacuum, 
add  to  our  difficulty  in  placing  ourselves  in 
a  sensitive  relation  with  a  noble  body  of 
poetry. 

Swinburne's  own  attitude  to  Songs  before 
Sunrise,  however,  should  not  be  overlooked.  To 
the  end  of  his  life  he  continued  to  regard  it  as  the 
most  intimate,  the  most  sincere,  and  the  most 
important  of  all  his  writings.  He  was  greatly 
disappointed  if  any  critic,  however  lavish  of 
praise  in  other  quarters,  depreciated  it ;  and  over 
and  over  again  he  repeated  to  his  private  friends 
his  conviction  that  his  "other  books  are.  books. 
Songs  before  Sunrise  is  myself."  He  wished  it 
to  be  studied  in  relation  with  A  Song  of  Italy, 
"or  rather  as  the  steamer  of  which  that  was  the 
tug."  He  wrote  to  Stedman,  several  years  later: 
"Of  all  I  have  done  I  rate  'Hertha'  highest 
as  a  single  piece,  finding  in  it  the  most  of  lyric 
force  and  music  combined  with  the  most  of 
condensed  and  clarified  thought,  I  think  there 
really  is  a  good  deal  compressed  and  condensed 
into  that  poem." 

There  is  an  aspect  of  Songs  before  Sunrise, 
moreover,  which  must  not  be  overlooked  in  our 
estimate  of  the  personal  attitude  of  the  poet. 
He  was  infatuated  with  the  dream  of  Italian 
revolution,  but  there  was  something  higher  and 
vaster  behind  the  dream.  The  purely  intel- 
lectual quality  in  this  body  of  lyrical  verse  was 
admirable,  and  so  original  as  to  be  almost  un- 


194  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


I     L^ 


\] 


paralleled  since  the  days  of  ancient  Greece. 
i  Swinburne  conceived  the  Republic,  not  merely 
/  as  a  convenient  method  of  democratic  govern- 
ment, but  as  being  the  tangible  embodiment  of 
\  freedom  in  the  action  of  society  at  its  very 
highest  development.  This  was  a  conception 
not  easily  intelligible  to  the  readers  of  popular 
poetry,  but  it  did  not  pass  without  honourable 
recognition  from  the  advanced  leaders  of  philo- 
sophic thought.  In  particular.  Professor  W.  K. 
Clifford  early  insisted  on  the  intellectual  impor- 
tance of  Swinburne's  idealism,  giving  his  lyrics  a 
prominence  which  philosophers  habitually  grudge 
to  poets. ^  He  described  Swinburne  as  one  "into 
whose  work  it  is  impossible  to  read  more  or  more 
fruitful  meaning  than  he  meant  in  wTiting  it," 
and  this  is  the  answer  to  the  reproach  of  those 
who  find  themselves  borne  so  vehemently  on 
the  tide  of  his  melody  that  they  fail  to  note  the 
course  of  their  pilot. 

/Swinburne's  claim  to  be  considered  as  among 
the  most  purely  philosophical  of  all  the  English 
poets  is  founded  on  several  numbers  of  Songs 
before  Sunrise,  none  of  which  are  directly  occupied 
with  the  aims  of  Mazzini  or  the  errors  of  Napoleon 
III.  In  "Mater  Triumphalis,"  in  the  "Pre- 
lude" and  the  "Epilogue,"  in  "The  Litany  of 
Nations,"  in  "Hertha"  pre-eminently,  we  see 
a  statement  of  Swinburne's  loftiest  doctrine. 
They  establish  that  the  summit  of  freedom  is 
that  condition  in  which  the  Spirit  of  Humanity 
acts  and  moves  with  the  severest  ethical  pro- 
priety.    In  the  phrase  of  Epictetus,  which  Swin- 

1  See  Professor  Clifford's  Cosmic  Emotion,  published  in  1877. 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC         195 

burne  loved  to  repeat,  it  is  when  "the  Httle 
soul"  is  least  hampered  by  "the  corpse  which  is 
Man"  that  human  nature  reaches  its  altitude. 
Liberty,  Swinburne  used  as  the  name  for  the 
Soul,  when  it  succeeds  in  breaking  and  casting 
off  the  shackles  of  its  dead  rudiments  and  sur- 
vivals. This  is  an  organic  action,  the  result  of 
the  exalted  union  of  the  best  parts  of  humanity. 
Liberty,  in  other  words,  is  "the  Mother  of  Life, 
personifying  herself  in  the  good  works  of  man- 
kind." It  is  that  ideal  which  T.  H.  Green  (with 
whom,  we  may  recollect,  Swinburne  had  been 
associated  at  Oxford)  was  to  define  ten  years 
later  as  "The  maximum  of  power  for  all  members 
of  human  society  alike  to  make  the  best  of 
themselves."  ^  The  emotion  of  the  poet  in 
presence  of  the  supreme  and  eternal  character- 
istics of  the  universe  gave  to  the  noblest  parts 
of  Songs  before  Sunrise  an  intensity  unique  in 
English  literature,  and  probably  to  be  com- 
pared with  nothing  else  written  since  the  Greeks 
produced  cosmological  hymns  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury B.C. 

It  has  been  alleged  that  Swinburne  imitated 
Victor  Hugo  in  the  form  of  Songs  before  Sunrise. 
Doubtless  the  attitude  of  a  man  whom  he  admired 
so  enthusiastically,  and  of  whom  he  so  utterly 
approved,  was  not  without  its  effect.  But  the 
more  closely  we  seek  for  a  prototype  to  Swinburne's 
republican  lyrics  in  those  of  Hugo  the  less  surely 
shall  we  find  it.  Neither  Les  Contemplations 
nor  Les  Chdtiments  offers  really  a  parallel  case. 

^Liberal  Legislation  and  Freedom  of  Contract,  a  lecture  delivered  at 
Leicester  in  1881. 


196  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Indeed,  Les  Quatre  Vents  de  Vesprit,  in  certain 
parts,  much  more  closely  approximates  to  Songs 
before  Sunrise,  but  it  was  published  ten  years 
later,  and  shall  we  dare  to  advance  the  theory 
that  Hugo  imitated  Swinburne?  It  is  true  that 
on  rare  occasions  the  careful  reader  may  find 
in  Les  Chdtiments  phrases  and  even  stanzas  that 
must  have  influenced  the  English  poet.  No 
more  curious  example  could  be  pointed  to 
than 

Quand  I'ltalie  en  deuil  dressa,  du  Tibre  au  Po, 

Son  drapeau  magnifique, 
Quand  ce  grand  peuple,  apres  s'etre  couche  troupeau, 

Se  leva  republique, 

C'est  toi,  quand  Rome  aux  fers  jeta  le  cri  d'espoir, 

Toi  qui  brisas  son  aile, 
Toi  qui  fis  retomber  I'affreux  capuchon  noir 

Sur  sa  face  eternelle  ! 

But  in  the  political  poetry  of  Victor  Hugo 
there  is  far  more  that  is  personal,  episodical, 
actual,  in  other  words,  amusing,  than  in  Songs 
before  Sunrise,  where  the  solemn  fierceness  and 
tenderness  are  never  relieved  by  a  note  of  domestic 
or  rustic  realism.  Perhaps  such  pieces  as  "Before 
a  Crucifix"  and  "To  Walt  Whitman  in  America" 
come  nearest  to  introducing  this  variety  of  tone 
and  colour,  yet  nothing  here  is  so  "amusing," 
in  the  true  sense,  as  "Le  Chasseur  Noir"  or 
"Souvenir  de  la  Nuit  du  4."  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  a  purity  of  language,  a  Simonidean  grace, 
revealed  not  once  nor  twice,  but  over  and  over 
again  in  Songs  before  Sunrise,  which  is  more 
delicate,  more  exquisite,  than  all  but  the  best  of 


SONGS  OF  THE   REPUBLIC         197 

Victor  Hugo.  When  Swinburne  writes  "The 
Pilgrims,"  "The  Oblation,"  "Quia  Multum 
Amavit,"  and  so  many  others,  he  breaks  the 
alabaster  box  of  spikenard  over  the  bowed  head 
of  the  goddess  of  Liberty. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    MIDDLE    YEARS 
(1870-1879) 

When  Swinburne  was  in  his  thirty-fourth  year 
an  incident  occurred  which  would  be  too  trifling 
for  record  in  the  career  of  a  man  of  action,  but 
which  exercised  on  his  cloistered  spirit  an  extra- 
ordinary influence.  In  1864  he  had  been  elected 
a  member  of  the  Arts  Club,  to  which  many  of 
his  immediate  associates  belonged.  Swinburne, 
whose  movements  in  London  were  extremely 
precise,  was  accustomed  to  spend  a  part  of  every 
day  in  the  Club,  where  he  wrote  his  letters, 
enjoyed  the  conversation  of  his  friends,  and 
occasionally  entertained  strangers.  In  a  life 
so  monotonous  as  his,  the  Club  was  a  wholesome 
and  an  important  element  of  daily  change.  Un- 
fortunately, during  the  summer  of  1870,  in 
circumstances  which  were  widely  related  at  the 
time,  he  had  a  difference  with  the  Committee  of 
the  Arts  Club,  and  he  was  asked  to  resign.  He 
considered  that  he  had  been  harshly  treated,  and 
there  arose  in  his  mind  a  spirit  of  resentment 
and  suspicion  which  took  up  its  abode  there,  and 
never  completely  left  him.  From  that  day  forth, 
Swinburne    never    consented    to    be   a   candidate 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  199 

for  any  public  or  private  body  of  men;  he  held 
himself  persistently  aloof  from  all  general  com- 
panionship. Without  losing  his  charming  ami- 
ability, and  almost  childlike  sweetness,  towards 
those  of  whose  fidelity  he  was  certain,  he  became 
affected  with  a  suspiciousness  and  a  tendency  to 
take  offence  which  showed  themselves  in  out- 
bursts of  disconcerting  violence,  and  made  the 
tone  of  the  controversies  which  he  now  more 
and  more  lightly  courted  often  as  unseemly  as 
it  was  extravagant. 

Nor  was  this  strange  duality  of  sweetness  and 
fierceness  the  only  anomaly  of  his  character,  for 
from  this  time  forth  the  discrepancy  between 
his  behaviour  in  London  and  in  the  country 
became  more  remarkable  than  ever.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  dwell  on  much  that  was  distressing, 
and  even  alarming,  in  his  town  habits,  but  to 
those  who  only  saw  him  at  Holmwood,  or  during 
his  visits  to  Jowett,  or  at  Ashburnham,  the 
legend  of  a  tempestuous  Algernon  seemed  a  fable. 
An  interesting  letter  from  Henry  Kingsley,  written 
at  Datchet  in  1871,  exactly  defines  the  situation : 

The  Swinburnes  and  ourselves  are  neighbours  and 
friends.  The  Admiral  and  Lady  Jane  Swinburne  have 
bought  Holmwood,  old  Lady  Stanley  of  Alderley's 
home.  They  are  very  agreeable  neighbours  to  us,  for 
they  have  the  best  library  of  its  size  I  have  ever  seen. 
I  believe  Algy  is  very  eccentric  in  London,  but  I  never 
see  him  there.  Here  he  is  a  perfectly  courteous  little 
gentleman. 

It  was  towards  the  end  of  December  1870  or 
the  beginning  of  January  1871  that  I  was  pre- 
sented to  Swinburne  at  an  evening-party  in  the 


200  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

studio  of  Ford  Madox  Brown,  to  whose  family 
and  hospitable  house  in  Fitzroy  Square  I  had  been 
introduced  by  William  Bell  Scott.  On  this  occa- 
sion I  had  the  privilege  of  meeting  for  the  first  time 
several  persons  now  celebrated.  Mrs.  William 
]\Iorris,  in  her  ripest  beauty,  and  dressed  in  a  long 
unfashionable  gown  of  ivory  velvet,  occupied  the 
painting-throne,  and  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti, 
who,  though  still  almost  young,  was  yet  too 
stout  for  elegance,  squatted,  —  for  some  part  of 
the  evening  at  least,  —  on  a  hassock  at  her  feet. 
The  "marvellous  boy,  that  perished  in  his 
prime,"  Oliver  Madox  Brown,  carrying  on  his 
arms  and  shoulders  tame  white  rats,  shattered 
the  nerves  of  the  ladies.  Spontaneity  of  be- 
haviour in  society  was  at  that  time  encouraged 
by  the  Pre-Raphaelites.  But  among  so  much 
that  was  wonderful,  I  continued  riveted  to  the 
aspect  of  Swinburne,  who  indulged  me  with 
quite  a  long  conversation.  His  kindness,  at 
once,  became  like  the  kindness  of  an  elder 
brother.  In  some  ways  he  fulfilled,  and  more 
than  fulfilled,  the  promise  of  my  hero-worship. 
At  the  same  time,  I  have  to  confess  that  there 
was  something  in  his  appearance  and  in  his 
gestures  which  I  found  disconcerting,  and  which 
I  have  a  difficulty  in  defining  without  a  suspicion 
of  caricature.  He  was  not  quite  like  a  human 
being.  Moreover,  the  dead  pallor  of  his  face 
and  his  floating  balloon  of  red  hair,  had  already, 
although  he  was  but  in  his  thirty-third  year,  a 
faded  look.  As  he  talked  to  me,  he  stood,  perfectly 
rigid,  with  his  arms  shivering  at  his  sides,  and  his 
little  feet  tight  against  each  other,  close  to  a  low 


THE   MIDDLE  YEARS  201 

settee  in  the  middle  of  the  studio.  Every  now 
and  then,  without  breaking  off  talking  or  bending 
his  body,  he  hopped  on  to  this  sofa,  and  presently 
hopped  down  again,  so  that  I  was  reminded  of 
some  orange-crested  bird  —  a  hoopoe,  perhaps  — 
hopping  from  perch  to  perch  in  a  cage.  The 
contrast  between  these  sudden  movements  and 
the  enthusiasm  of  his  rich  and  flute-like  voice 
was  very  strange.  In  course  of  a  little  time, 
Swinburne's  oddities  ceased  to  affect  me  in  the 
slightest  degree,  but  on  this  first  occasion  my 
impression  of  them  was  rather  startling  than 
pleasant. 

Whether  in  London  or  at  Holmwood,  Swin- 
burne was  now  always  at  work.  Before  Songs 
before  Sunrise  had  left  the  press  he  was  closely 
occupied  with  a  dramatic  continuation  of  that 
history  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  which  he  had 
begun  in  Chastelard.  This  was  to  become  Both- 
well.  It  was  planned  on  a  very  large  scale,  and 
Swinburne  felt  "at  times  crushed  under  the 
Tarpeian  weight"  of  his  materials.  Nevertheless, 
he  finished  a  first  act,  which  Frederick  Locker 
set  up  in  type  for  him,  but  which  he  after- 
wards modified ;  and  he  wrote  a  scene  or 
two  more,  then  dropping  the  scheme  for  two  or 
three  years.  In  the  early  summer  of  1871  his 
extravagances  reduced  him  to  such  a  state  of 
health  that  his  father,  warned  by  Lord  Houghton, 
came  up  to  town  and  carried  him  off  to  Holmwood, 
where  he  promptly  recovered.  Jowett  proposed 
that  he  should  recuperate  by  paying  him  a  visit 
at  Oxford,  and  Swinburne  arrived  late  in  May. 
Taine,  who  was  spending  a  long  time  in  England 


202    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

in  1871,  met  Swinburne  at  the  Lodge  of  Balliol 
College  on  the  3rd  of  June.  He  wrote  home  to 
his  wife  next  day  as  follows : 

Presente  a  M.  Swinburne  le  poete;  ses  vers  sont  dans 
le  genre  de  Baudelaire  et  de  Victor  Hugo :  petit  homrae 
roux  en  redingote  et  cravate  bleue,  ce  qui  faisait  con- 
traste  avee  tous  les  habits  noirs  et  cravates  blanches : 
il  ne  parle  que  raidi,  rejete  en  arriere  avec  un  mouvement 
convulsif  et  continu  des  membres  comrae  s'il  avait  le 
delirium  tremens  —  tres  passionne  pour  la  litterature 
frangaise  moderne,  Hugo,  Stendhal,  et  pour  la  peinture. 
Son  style  est  d'un  visionnaire  malade  qui,  pour  systeme, 
cherche  la  sensation. 

Matthew  Arnold  appears  to  have  been  staying 
w^ith  Jow^ett  at  the  same  time,  and  Taine  formed 
an  even  less  favourable  impression  of  him.^  A 
few  days  later  Swinburne  was  taken  unwillingly 
to  the  Senate  House  to  see  an  honorary  degree 
conferred  upon  Taine,  about  whom  he  was  not 
enthusiastic.  He  frequently  escaped  from  Balliol 
to  visit  Brasenose,  where  Walter  Pater,  with 
whom  he  was  now  for  a  short  time  intimate, 
entertained  him ;  and  Exeter  College,  where  he 
was  welcome  to  Bywater,  who  once  gave  me  a 
most  amusing  account  of  how  Jowett  swooped 
down  on  Swinburne,  and  carried  him  off  like  an 
indignant  nurse,  wath  a  glare  at  Bywater  as  he 
did  so.  Jowett  invited  him  to  join  a  reading- 
party  at  Tummel  Bridge,  near  Pitlochry,  and 
Swinburne  started  on  the  11th  of  August.  He 
now  gave  much  practical  help  in  Jowett's 
scheme  for  editing  a  Children's  Bible,  which 
appeared    in    1873.     He    was    by    this    time    the 

•  n.  Taine:  sa  vie  et  correspondance,  tome  iii.     Paris,  1905. 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  203 

subject  of  great  public  curiosity,  and  a  whisper 
having  been  spread  abroad  that  he  would  appear 
at  church,  "the  sacred  edifice  was  unusually 
full,  owing  to  men  of  reading-parties"  who  came 
from  far  and  wide  with  *'the  uncanonical  pur- 
pose" of  bringing  down  the  poet.  But  this,  as 
Jowett  observed,  "was  taking  a  very  bad  shot." 
One  visitor,  however,  gratified  his  curiosity,  but 
not  at  church.     Algernon  wrote  (Aug.  24,  1871) : 

Browning  is  our  neighbour  in  these  latitudes;  he 
came  over  the  day  before  yesterday  in  high  feather.  I 
have  just  read  his  new  poem  —  it  has  very  fine  things  in  it, 
especially  the  part  about  Hercules  —  much  finer  than 
anything  said  about  him  by  Euripides.  But  the  pathos 
of  the  subject  is  too  simple  and  downright  for  Browning's 
analytic  method. 

Swinburne  found  Pitlochry  "very  refreshing  and 
good  for  the  health,  having  a  fine  river  to  swim 
in  and  fine  hills  to  climb." 

Jowett  considered  that  Algernon  did  not  see 
enough  people  of  various  kinds,  and  he  frequently 
invited  him  to  the  hospitable  lodge  of  Balliol. 
The  Master's  choice  of  guests  was  somewhat  mis- 
cellaneous, and  it  was  about  this  time  that  he 
asked  Blanche,  Countess  of  Airlie,  an  old  friend,  to 
come  to  Oxford  to  meet  Swinburne,  George  Eliot, 
and  the  first  Lord  Westbury.  The  idea  of  this 
remarkable  trio  alarmed  Lady  Airlie,  who  begged  to 
be  allowed  to  come  "when  Mr.  Jowett  was  alone." 

Early  in  September,  at  Jowett's  instigation, 
Swinburne  started  from  Pitlochry  for  an  excursion 
"with  an  Oxford  man  named  Harrison,  whom  I 
met  chez  Jowett,"  mainly  on  foot,  first  through 
Glencoe,  then  up  the  Caledonian  Canal  to  Inver- 


204  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

ness,  and  finally  to  the  Far  West  of  the  Highlands, 
to  Lochs  Maree  and  Torridon.  The  latter  made 
a  profound  impression  upon  him.  He  wrote  of 
it,  at  the  time,  as 

the  divinest  combination  of  lakes,  mountains,  straits, 
sea-rocks,  bays,  gulfs  and  open  sea  ever  achieved  by  the 
forces  of  Hertha  in  her  most  favourable  and  fiercely 
maternal  mood.  I  had  a  divine  day  there  [Sept. 
14],  and  swam  right  out  of  one  bay  round  a  beautiful 
headland  to  the  next,  and  round  again  back  under 
shelves  of  rock  shining  double  in  the  sun  above  water  and 
below. 

\Mien,  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  he 
published  the  noble  ode  called  "Loch  Torridon," 
the  vision  was  still  bright  in  his  memory.  Some 
of  the  walking  was  over  rough  country,  and  one 
afternoon  Swinburne  became  footsore,  and  then 
plaintive,  and  then  deeply  depressed  and  quite 
silent.  Suddenly,  however,  they  came  upon  a 
water-fall,  and  in  an  instant  he  was  transformed, 
dancing  before  it  in  an  ecstasy  of  delight  and 
adoration ;  and  in  spite  of  his  lameness  he  went 
on  gaily,  chanting  one  French  lyric  after  another. 
This  was  told  to  Mr.  Andrew  C.  Bradley  by 
Edwin  Harrison  himself,  who  died  many  years 
ago. 

The  tour  closed  at  Knockespock,  the  house  of 
Algernon's  uncle.  Sir  Henry  Percy  Gordon,  in 
Aberdeenshire,  where  he  was  extremely  happy; 
so  that  this  proved  a  very  fortunate  half-j'^ear,  at 
the  close  of  which  Algernon  could,  surprisingly,  be 
described  as  "grown  stout  and  sunburnt."  But 
he  insisted  on  returning  to  his  old  habits  of  life 
in  London,  where,  in  October,  his  father,  having 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  205 

been  warned  anonymously  of  his  condition, 
found  him,  and  carried  him  off  to  Holmwood. 
He  rapidly  recovered,  as  usual. 

In  the  autumn  and  winter  of  1871  Swinburne 
was  mainly  occupied  on  two  enterprises  of  very 
various  value  and  importance.  One  of  these 
was  the  commencement  of  his  solitary  epic, 
Tristram  of  Lyonesse,  the  sumptuous  prelude 
to  which  he  finished  at  Tummel  Bridge ;  and  the 
other  was  his  share  In  the  controversy  of  the 
friends  of  D.  G.  Rossetti  with  the  egregious 
"Thomas  Maitland,"  who  virulently  attacked 
what  he  called  "The  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry" 
in  a  magazine  article.  This  pseudonymous  criti- 
caster turned  out  to  be  Mr.  Robert  Buchanan, 
who  (In  a  letter  of  March  1872)  confessed  to 
Robert  Browning  that  he  had  been  largely 
prompted  "by  the  instinct  of  recrimination." 
Swinburne's  principal  exploit  In  a  vivacious 
series  of  skirmishes  was  a  long  pamphlet  entitled 
Under  the  Microscope  (1872),  where  force  and 
learning  are  somewhat  thrown  away  upon  a 
theme  not  of  permanent  interest,  and  where 
the  writer's  prose  style  suffers  from  an  inordinate 
abuse  of  Ironical  Invective. 

The  three  or  four  years  which  preceded  the 
publication  of  Bothwell  formed  a  period  in  Swin- 
burne's life  which  differed  from  any  before  or 
after  it.  He  came  but  little  Into  the  sight  of  the 
public,  and  his  wonderful  productive  force  seemed 
to  be  checked.  This  was,  however,  only  apparent ; 
during  these  years  he  was  engaged,  almost 
furiously,  in  preparing  for  the  occupation  of  the 
rest  of  his  life.     He  was  studying  Shakespeare 


206  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

and  iEschylus  with  the  avowed  intention  of 
capturing  the  secret  of  their  art.  He  was  ex- 
perimenting in  many  forms  of  poetry.  He  was 
steeping  himself  almost  to  satiety  in  the  litera- 
tures of  England  and  France.  In  particular, 
about  the  year  1872,  the  plan  which  he  had 
formed  in  early  boyhood  of  continuing  and 
systematising  the  critical  work  of  Charles  Lamb 
as  applied  to  the  old  English  dramatists  took 
definite  shape.  To  Furnivall,  with  whom  he 
was  now  on  friendly  terms,  he  suggested  the 
publication  of  the  works  of  Cyril  Tourneur.  This 
came  to  nothing,  and  the  earliest  evidence  of 
his  new  enthusiasm  w^as  a  study  on  John  Ford, 
which  Swinburne  never  surpassed,  and  never 
perhaps  equalled  in  that  special  province.  This 
essay  deserves  close  attention,  for  it  is  one  of 
Swinburne's  greatest  achievements  in  the  art  of 
concentrated  and  comparative  eulogistic  analysis. 
In  form  it  displays  his  earnest  discipleship  of  Paul 
de  Saint-Victor,  but  it  has  a  dignity  and  a  breadth 
which  surpass  the  qualities  of  his  great  French 
master.  It  has  also,  it  must  be  admitted,  not  a 
little  of  that  exaggeration  of  praise  and  tumid  heat 
of  attack  which  were  in  later  years  so  seriously  to 
impair  the  value  of  Swinburne's  criticism.  Beauti- 
ful and  valuable  in  itself  as  is  the  "John  Ford," 
we  discover  in  it  the  germ  of  blemishes  which 
ultimately  made  such  essays  of  his  old  age  as 
those  on  Dekker  or  Nabbes  scarcely  readable. 

On  October  23,  1872,  Theophile  Gautier  died, 
and  early  in  the  following  year  the  publisher 
Lemerre  issued  a  handsome  volume  in  quarto, 
Le  Tomheau  de  Theophile  Gautier^  in  which  the 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  207 

French  poets  of  the  day,  led  by  Victor  Hugo, 
celebrated  the  merits  of  an  admirable  artist.  To 
this  anthology  —  at  the  suggestion  of  Jose  Maria 
de  Heredia,  transmitted  by  Mr.  (now  Sir)  Sidney 
Colvin  —  Swinburne  contributed  no  fewer  than 
ten  poems,  no  other  writer  sending  more  than 
two. 

Swinburne  had  been  influenced  by  Theophile 
Gautier,  most  of  all  no  doubt  by  the  preface  to 
Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  almost  to  excess,  but 
he  had  not  known  him  well.  Indeed,  in  opposition 
to  what  has  been  alleged,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
he  met  Gautier  more  than  once,  when  he  was 
presented  to  him  in  the  Salon  Carre  of  the 
Louvre.  So,  at  least,  a  fortnight  before  his 
death,  he  assured  Professor  James  Fitzmaurice- 
Kelly. 

Of  the  English  poet's  sheaf  of  tributes,  two 
were  in  English,  two  in  French,  one  in  Latin 
and  five  in  Greek,  iTTLypdfxfiaTa  eTTirvyi^ihia  ets 
©eo(^tXoi/.  These  latter  had  received  the  some- 
what hurried  revision  and  approval  of  Jowett, 
w^ho  particularly  praised  the  Latin  choriambics. 
In  these  learned  exercises  Swinburne  was  happy 
to  believe  that  he  had  no  competitors  in  English 
poetry  except  Milton  and  Landor,  neither  of  whom, 
moreover,  was  master  of  French  composition.  The 
sonnet  and  the  ode  in  that  language,  on  this 
occasion,  were  impeccable  in  prosody,  and  were 
admired  in  Paris.  The  French  poems  of  Swin- 
burne, as  a  French  critic  once  wittily  explained 
to  me,  are  perfectly  correct,  and  as  like  real 
French  verse  as  the  best  Renaissance  Latin 
poetry  is  like  Catullus.     The  two  English  poems 


208     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

in  the    Tomheau  of    1873  are  the   impish  sonnet 
on  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin : 

This  is  the  golden  book  of  spirit  and  sense, 
The  holy  writ  of  beauty, 

composed  in  derision  of  the  PhiHstines,  and  a 
noble  elegy,  splendid  "in  clear  chryselephantine 
verse,"  which  is  valuable  as  showing  that 
Swinburne's  lyrico-elegiac  genius  had  not  begun 
to  decline.  Here,  for  the  first  time,  he  makes 
elegy  serve  as  a  species  of  ceremonial  criticism 
on  the  life  and  work  of  a  great  man  dead,  an 
innovation  which  he  was  further  to  develop  later. 
That  he  was  not  unaware  of  the  dangers 
which  attended  the  excessive  facility  in  versifica- 
tion which  he  had  now  attainedis~shown,  curi- 
ously enough,  in  connection  with  these  very 
"Memorial  Verses  to  Gautier,"  in  a  letter  to 
Mr.  John  Morley  (Nov.  21,  1872) : 

The  metrical  efiFect  is  I  think  not  bad,  but  the  danger 
of  such  metres  is  diff useness  and  flaccidity ;  I  perceive 
this  one  to  have  a  tendency  to  the  dulcet  and  luscious 
form  of  verbosity  which  has  to  be  guarded  against, 
lest  the  poem  lose  its  foothold  and  be  swept  off  its  legs, 
sense  and  all,  down  a  flood  of  effeminate  and  monotonous 
music,  or  lost  and  spilt  in  a  maze  of  what  I  call  draggle- 
tailed  melody.  ...  I  am  going  over  the  part  already 
thrown  off,  to  brace  up  the  verses,  —  tighten  the  snaffles 
and  shorten  the  girths  of  the  Heliconian  jade. 

On  January  9,  1873,  as  the  result  of  an  opera- 
tion, the  dethroned  Napoleon  III.  died  in  exile. 
The  event  was  one  of  livelj^  interest  to  Swinburne, 
although  the  wretched  monarch  had  ceased  to 
exercise    power   or   even    influence.     At    first   he 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  209 

waited  to  see  "whether  the  Master  will  be  minded, 
—  as  he  was  in  the  case  of  Saint-Arnaud,  —  to 
bestrew  with  any  funeral  flowers  the  new  tomb  at 
Chiselhurst"  (Jan.  18).  But  Hugo  was  silent,  and 
in  May  Swinburne  published  in  the  Examiner 
certain  uproarious  sonnets  entitled  "The  Saviour 
of  Society."  The  Spectator,  which  regarded  the 
language  of  these  as  disrespectful  to  the  memory 
of  John  Stuart  Mill,  who  had  just  died  (May  8), 
reproved  Swinburne  severely  for  "a  gross  parody 
on  the  most  sacred  of  subjects,"  and  the  poet 
defended  himself  with  spirit  both  in  prose  and 
verse.  "To  expose  the  grossness  and  absurdity  of 
the  insult  or  parody  implied  in  [styling  Napoleon 
III.]  'Messiah  of  Order'  and  '^aviour  of  Society,' 
[Swinburne]  thought  good  to  carry  the  parallel 
a  little  further  in  an  ironical  address  or  form  of 
prayer  to  be  offered  by  his  worshippers  to  the 
new  Redeemer  of  their  kind."  That  was  all  very 
well,  but  the  Spectator  still  expressed  "horror  and 
disgust,"  and  the  poet  was  certainly  ill-advised. 
The  controversy,  which  attracted  a  great  deal 
of  public  attention,  brought  forth  no  sign  of 
repentance  from  Swinburne,  and  the  sonnets, 
without  modification,  were  reprinted  two  years 
later  in  Songs  of  Two  Nations} 

Swinburne  was  much  occupied  with  France 
at  this  time,  but  his  face  was  obstinately  turned 
backward.  Here  he  could  not  comprehend  the 
problems  of  the  future,  nor  forget  the  injuries 
of     the     past.     His     extreme     and     unwavering 

1  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise  brought  together  for  the  first  time  the   particular 
sonnets  in  question  and  the  correspondence  to  which  they  led,  together 
with  a  preface  in  which  the  whole  story  was  told  by  me  in  detail.     This 
was  privately  printed  as  a  pamphlet  in  1913. 
p 


210     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

detestation  of  Napoleon  III.  was  a  remarkable 
characteristic  of  his  temper.  It  dated  back  to 
his  childhood,  and  was  no  doubt  connected  with 
the  coup  d'etat  of  1851,  the  results  of  which  im- 
pressed his  schoolboy  imagination  at  Eton,  but 
it  was  certainly  confirmed  from  year  to  year  by 
the  attitude  of  Victor  Hugo.  Nothing  Swinburne 
wrote  exceeded  in  virulence  some  of  the  attacks 
on  Napoleon  made  by  the  great  exile  from  Jersey. 
But  when  Napoleon  III.  died,  in  pain  and  ob- 
scurity, at  Chiselhurst,  having  ceased  for  three 
years  to  be  a  power  for  good  or  for  evil,  France 
partly  forgave  him,  and  even  Victor  Hugo  forgot 
him.  Yet  Swinburne  neither  forgot  nor  forgave, 
and  to  him  it  seemed  as  just  to  continue  to 
execrate  this  miserable  man  six  months  after  his 
death  as  it  had  been  to  abuse  him  six  years  before  it. 

The  truth  was  that  to  the  transcendental 
English  poet  Napoleon  III.  w^as  not  a  man,  but 
a  symbol.  All  that  the  Christians  in  Rome  had 
thought  of  Nero,  Swinburne  thought  of  Louis 
Bonaparte ;  to  him  the  name  represented  tj^ranny 
in  its  feeblest,  its  most  cruel,  its  most  treacherous 
and  debauched  manifestation.  It  was  a  principle 
of  evil  which  could  never  be  pardoned.  The 
essence  of  the  series  of  sonnet-curses,  Dirae,  was 
ecstasy  that  "we  have  lived  to  say.  The  dog  is 
dead."  Swinburne  enjoyed  cursing,  and  he  cursed 
extremely  well,  but  it  was  not  Hutton  of  the  Spec- 
tator only  who  objected  to  these  vociferous  Dirae. 

Late  in  this  year  Swinburne  enjoyed  a  brush 
with  Emerson,  of  all  people  in  the  world.  In  the 
course  of  1873  Emerson  and  his  daughter  had 
visited  England  and  Egypt;    it  was  to  be  his  last 


THE   :\iIDDLE   YEARS  211 

excursion  to  Europe.  He  had  scarcely  returned 
to  Concord  when  a  blazmg  "interview"  with 
him  appeared  in  an  American  newspaper.  This 
article  caused  a  certain  scandal,  for  in  it  Emerson 
was  reported  as  animadverting  with  great  severity 
upon  several  leading  English  contemporaries. 
Swinburne,  in  particular,  was  singled  out  for 
abuse  of  a  singularly  revolting  kind.  X  copy  of 
the  American  newspaper  was  sent  to  him,  marked, 
and  he  was  exceedingly  perturbed.  He  wrote 
to  Emerson,  expressing  his  conviction  that  the 
philosopher  had  been  entirely  misrepresented, 
and  begging  for  a  line  of  assurance  to  that  effect. 
It  was  a  courteous  and  reasonable  letter,  and  it 
is  a  great  pity  that  Emerson  did  not  think  proper 
to  reply  to  it.  We  know  now  that  Emerson's 
health  was  not  then  very  good.  His  silence, 
however,  seemed  outrageously  injurious  to  Swin- 
burne, who  could  not  be  prevented  from  writing 
a  second  epistle,  of  matchless  invective.  He 
admitted  to  me,  when  I  mildly  objected,  that  it 
was  "perhaps  mere  furious  scolding,"  but  he 
sent  it  off  all  the  same.  Emerson  remained 
silent.  Swinburne  then  censured  the  person  and 
character  of  the  philosopher-  in  a  series  of  Latin 
epigrams,  which  he  displayed  wath  exultation 
to  his  friends.  If  these  "Uranian  or  Cloacine" 
verses  reached  Emerson  himself,  the  Sage  of 
Concord  was  probably  (and  fortunately)  unable 
to   construe   them.^     Against   Carlyle,   too,   there 

'  My  friend  Mr.  Lewis  N.  Chase  reminds  me  that  Emerson,  in  his 
English  Traits,  1856,  said  that  Landor  had  "pestered"  him  "with  Southey." 
This  might  seem  to  Swinburne  disrespectful  to  Landor,  but  in  fact  Landor 
had  immediately,  in  his  Letter  to  R.  W.  Emerson,  dealt  with  this  matter, 
and  had  shown  no  offence. 


212  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWLNBURNE 

was  some  arrogant  manifestation.  The  fact  is 
that  Swinburne  was  at  this  time  in  a  state  of 
acute  intellectual  irritability,  which  betrayed 
itself  in  his  personal  relations.  His  friendships 
cooled ;  he  saw  less  of  Lord  Houghton,  and 
gradually  ceased  to  be  in  close  relation  with 
Rossetti,  Morris,  and  even  Burne-Jones.  He 
was  justly  incensed  with  Howell,  who,  certainly, 
had  never  deserved  his  confidence;  he  contrived 
to  quarrel  with  the  indulgent  Joseph  Knight ; 
and  his  association  with  Purnell  began  to  close. 
In  this  comparative  isolation  the  friendship  of 
Jowett  was  of  the  highest  value  to  him.  During 
these  years,  which  were  frequently  painful,  the 
great  Master  of  Balliol  preserved  an  influence  that 
was  serenely  beneficial  over  the  most  wayward 
and  the  most  brilliant  of  his  old  pupils.  Visits 
to  Oxford,  protracted  sojournings  in  Cornwall, 
at  Holm  wood,  and  —  through  successive  autumns 
—  in  Scotland,  long  walks  and  long  talks  in  which 
all  came  out  that  was  best  in  the  oddly-assorted 
couple,  these  more  than  anything  else  carried 
Swinburne  across  the  reefs  of  a  dangerous  and 
critical  time.  Jowett  displayed  a  wonderful 
tact  in  dealing  with  his  guest,  cajoling,  calming, 
interesting  him  and  even  submitting  his  own 
translations  to  his  disciple's  judgment.  Swin- 
burne used  with  pride  to  tell  how,  when  once 
staying  at  Balliol,  the  Master  asked  him  to  go 
over  his  first  version  of  the  SjjmposinJ7i  of  Plato 
with  the  Greek  text,  and  see  if  an\4hing  seemed 
to  him  to  need  correction.  Graciousness  could 
go  no  further  from  the  official  representative 
of  Greek  at  Oxford  to  one  whose  Oxonian  career 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  213 

had  culminated  in  "total  and  scandalous  failure." 
Swinburne  bent  ardently  to  the  task,  and,  "feeling 
that  it  would  be  a  rather  mean  and  treacherous 
sort  of  deference  or  modesty  which  would  pre- 
clude him  from  speaking,  he  took  upon  himself 
to  say  diffidently  that  if  he  had  been  called  upon 
to  construe"  a  certain  sentence  "he  should 
have  construed  it  otherwise.  Mr.  Jowett  turned 
and  looked  at  him  with  surprised  and  widened 
eyes :  and  said  after  a  minute  or  so,  '  Of  course 
that  is  the  meaning.  You  would  be  a  good 
scholar  if  you  were  to  study.'" 

The  anecdote  is  characteristic  of  the  mutual 
relation  of  the  two  in  these  years. ^  Jowett  was 
indulgently  amused  at  Swinburne's  violence  of 
opinion.  It  was  probably  at  this  time  that  Mr. 
Asquith  met  the  poet  when  both  were  guests  at  the 
Lodge  of  Balliol.  Jowett  chaffed  Swinburne  with 
having  defended  the  propriety  of  regicide  when 
he  was  a  member  of  the  Old  Mortality  at  Oxford, 
and  pretended  to  wonder  what  the  other  members 
of  that  society  thought  of  his  taking  that  view. 
"There  was  not  one  of  us,"  Swinburne  drew 
himself  up  and  replied,  "who  would  have 
questioned  for  a  moment  that  sacred  duty." 

He  gave  way  at  this  time,  during  his  London 
visits,  to  great  eccentricity,  and  Miss  Bird  informs 
me  of  an  incident  sufficiently  droll.  Her  brother, 
the  doctor,  took  Swinburne  to  a  public  dinner, 
where    were    present    a    considerable    number    of 

'  The  late  Professor  Ingram  Rywater,  who  was  present  at  some  of 
the  symposia  which  led  to  the  sev_<^nd  edition  of  Jowett's  Plato,  reported 
to  me  cases  in  which  Swinburne  was  more  vivacious  than  this,  yet  the 
Master  no  less  patient.  "Another  howler,  Master!"  "Thank  you, 
Algernon,  thank  you!" 


214  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

journalists.  The  poet  was  politely  asked  whether 
he  would  be  so  kind  as  to  propose  the  toast  of 
"The  Press."  Dr.  George  Bird,  knowing  Swin- 
burne's invincible  objection  to  public  speaking, 
declined  the  honour  for  him,  but,  on  the  request 
being  repeated,  was  petrified  to  see  Swinburne 
rise  to  his  feet  and  shriek  out  the  words :  "  The 
Press  is  a  damnable  institution,  a  horrible  in- 
stitution, a  beastly  institution,"  and  then  sink 
back  into  his  seat,  and  close  his  eyes. 

A  new  friend  had  appeared  and  then  disap- 
peared in  the  course  of  1872.  Theodore  Watts,  a 
lawyer  of  St.  Ives  in  Huntingdonshire,  came  up  to 
London  with  an  ardent  enthusiasm  for  the  group 
of  Pre-Raphaelites.  He  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Rossetti  and  Morris  without  difficulty ;  to  gain 
that  of  Swinburne  w^as  not  so  easy.  His  first 
attempt,  which  Watts  used  in  later  years  to 
describe  with  considerable  humour,  was  so  un- 
successful that  the  door  of  hope  seemed  closed  to 
him.  However,  towards  the  end  of  1872,  Madox 
Brown,  after  hearing  of  the  misdeeds  of  Howell, 
recommended  Swinburne  to  place  his  business 
affairs  in  the  hands  of  Theodore  W^atts.  Nothing 
very  definite  came  of  this  until,  in  the  autumn 
of  the  following  year,  Swinburne  moved  into 
rooms  at  3  Great  James  Street,  which  he  was 
to  continue  to  occupy  until  he  left  London  for 
good  in  1879.  He  had  some  difficulty  in  getting 
free  from  earlier  liabilities,  and  W^atts,  who  had 
determined  to  settle  in  London,  now  stepped  in 
with  the  proffer  of  professional  advice,  which 
was  accepted.  He  called  on  the  poet,  and  was 
further  consulted  about  Swinburne's  agreements 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  215 

with  publishers,  which  his  previous  agent  had 
sadly  mismanaged.  The  result  was  that  Swin- 
burne impulsively  but  wisely  placed  his  affairs 
in  faithful  and  competent  hands.  To  his  few 
intimate  friends  he  announced  the  fact  with  a 
certain  solemnity :  for  example,  to  Mr.  John 
Morley  he  writes  (Dec.  16,  1873)  : 

I  am  negotiating  through  a  legal  friend  whom  perhaps 
you  know  —  Mr.  Watts,  a  friend  of  Rossetti  and  others 
of  my  near  friends,  for  the  future  pubhcation  of  my 
works  by  Chapman  and  Hall.  Mr.  Chapman  proposes 
to  issue  a  cheap  edition  of  my  entire  poems  in  the  same 
form  as  his  cheap  edition  of  Carlyle.  I  have  written  at 
once  in  reply,  expressing  my  readiness  to  [agree  to]  that. 

But  of  this  scheme  nothing  came. 

The  great  labour  of  these  years  was  the  building 
up  of  Bothwell,  a  gigantic  enterprise  which,  taken 
up  in  1871  and  dropped,  was  the  almost  unbroken 
occupation  of  1873.  It  was  a  mounting  structure, 
at  which  Swinburne  toiled  without,  for  a  long 
time,  any  clear  conception  of  its  limits.  It 
dilated  in  bulk  and  material  at  every  step  he 
took.  He  was  well  aware  of  its  vastness.  He 
wrote  to  Mr.  John  Morley : 

If  ever  accomplished,  this  drama  will  certainly  be  a 
great  work  in  one  sense,  for,  except  that  translation  from 
the  Spanish  of  an  improperly  named  comedy  in  25 
acts  published  in  1631,^  it  will  be  the  biggest  (I  fear)  in 
the  language.  But  having  made  a  careful  analysis  of 
historical  events  from  the  day  of  Rizzio's  murder  to  that 

^  The  reference  must  be  to  Mabbe's  translation  of  the  Celestina  of 
Fernando  de  Rojas.  Professor  J.  Fitzmaurice-Kelly  points  out  to  me 
that  Swinburne's  memory  as  to  the  number  of  acts  has  slipped.  "Putting 
it  at  the  highest,"  he  says,  "there  is  no  Spanish  edition  of  the  Celestina 
with  more  than  22  acts." 


216    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

of  Mary's  flight  into  England,  I  find  that  to  cast  into 
dramatic  mould  the  events  of  those  eighteen  months  it 
is  necessary  to  omit  no  detail,  drop  no  link  in  the  chain, 
if  the  work  is  to  be  either  dramatically  coherent  or 
historically  intelligible;  while  every  stage  of  the  action 
is  a  tragic  drama  of  itself  which  cries  aloud  for  representa- 
tion. The  enormity  of  the  subject,  together  with  its 
incomparable  capability  (if  only  the  strength  of  hand 
requisite  were  there)  for  dramatic  poetry,  assure  me 
as  I  proceed  more  and  more  forcibly  of  the  truth,  which 
I  suspected  from  the  first,  that  Shakespeare  alone  could 
have  grappled  with  it  satisfactorily,  and  wrung  the  final 
prize  of  the  tragedy  from  the  clutch  of  historic  fact.  But 
having  taken  up  the  enterprise  I  will  not  at  least  drop 
it  till  I  have  A\Testled  my  best  with  it. 

He  kept  his  word;  and  in  March  1874  he 
closed  the  last  scene  of  Botkwcll.  The  giant 
drama  was  published  three  months  later.  It 
was  received  with  great  favour  by  the  critics, 
and  it  pleased  the  public  more  than  anything 
which  Swinburne  had  published  since  Poems  and 
Ballads.  Frankly,  the  buyers  of  books  admitted 
that  they  had  had  enough  of  his  Republican 
odes  and  Italian  aspirations,  and  they  welcomed 
in  Bothwell  the  chronicle-rendering  of  a  story 
which  was  of  perennial  British  interest.  In  spite 
of  its  portentous  length  (it  ran  to  532  full  pages), 
it  was  bought  and  read. 

The  question  had  hardly  begun  to  be  asked 
in  England  whether  theatrical  literature  not 
intended  for  the  theatre  had  any  right  to  exist. 
In  bulk  Bothwell  resembles  one  of  the  five-act 
Jidai-Mono  or  classic  plays  of  eighteenth-century 
Japan,  and  it  could  only  be  performed,  like  an 
oriental     drama,     on     successive     nights.     Swin- 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  217 

burne,  as  may  be  gathered  from  his  letter  to 
Lord  Morley  quoted  above,  was  Httle  concerned 
in  approaching  his  subject  from  the  point  of  view 
of  stage-convenience.  He  poured  out  all  that  his 
memory  and  his  imagination  presented  to  him. 
When  he  wrote  the  opening  scene,  in  August 
1871,  and  gave  it  to  Jowett  to  read,  Jowett 
pronounced  it  much  too  long.  Swinburne  was 
surprised,  but,  having  a  great  respect  for  Jowett's 
judgment,  took  the  criticism  very  seriously. 
Accordingly  next  day  —  they  were  living  in  the 
hotel  at  Tummel  Bridge  —  Swinburne  stayed  in 
bed  all  the  morning  to  work  on  the  scene.  He 
produced  it  triumphantly  at  luncheon,  when 
Jowett  dryly  observed  that  it  was  three  lines 
longer  than  it  was  before.  This  was  told  to  Mr. 
A.  C.  Bradley  by  Edwin  Harrison,  who  was 
present ;  and  I  have  in  measure  confirmed  it  by 
an  examination  of  the  manuscript. 

Later  on,  at  one  of  Jowett's  reading-parties  at 
West  Malvern,  R.  W.  Raper  saw  Swinburne  sud- 
denly fling  himself  on  the  floor  at  Jowett's  feet, 
and  heard  him  say,  "Master,  I  feel  I  have  never 
thanked  you  enough  for  cutting  four  thousand 
lines  out  of  Botliwell.'''  Jowett  laughed  and 
said,  "Oh!  I  don't  know,  I  don't  know!  I 
daresay  I  was  quite  wrong!"  Public  taste 
has  changed  in  the  course  of  forty  years,  and 
readers  are  now  almost  as  impatient  of  unactable 
"poetic"  dramas  as  playgoers  are.  This  initial 
difficulty  of  bulk,  therefore,  cuts  Bothwell  off 
from  our  sympathy  to-day,  which  is  unfortunate, 
since  it  contains,  in  profusion,  evidences  of  its 
author's    genius    in    its    most    attractive    aspect. 


218    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

There  is  no  other  work  of  Swinburne  which  dis- 
plays so  unquestionably  his  gift  for  creating 
situation  and  interpreting  character.  There  is 
none  in  which  the  language  is  of  a  more  spirited 
simplicity  or  the  verse  more  fluid.  It  is  not,  of 
course,  the  best  play,  but  it  is  the  finest  dramatic 
romance  produced  in  England  throughout  the 
nineteenth  centurj',  and  among  the  myriad  blank- 
verse  imitations  of  the  Elizabethans  beloved  of 
Charles  Lamb,  Bothwell  floats  supreme,  a  leviathan. 
In  a  fine  sonnet  dedicatory  to  Victor  Hugo, 
originally  written,  as  appears  from  a  letter  to 
Mr.  (now  Sir)  Sidney  Colvin,  on  the  17th  of 
January  1873,  but  afterwards  much  revised,  Swin- 
burne points  out  that  over  the  scenes  of  Bothwell  — 

Un  peuple  qui  rugit  sous  les  pieds  d'une  femme 
Passe,  et  son  souffle  emplit  d'aube  et  d'ombre  et  de  bruit 
Un  ciel  apre  et  guerrier  qui  luit,  comme  une  lame 
Sur  I'avenir  debout,  sur  le  passe  detruit. 

This  renders  admirably  the  colour  of  the  drama, 
grey,  with  flashes  of  steel.  We  have  here  the 
same  Queen  Mary  who  animated  Chastelard, 
but  she  has  grown  older,  fiercer,  and  craftier,  and 
she  towers  over  a  more  turbulent  crowd  of  figures. 
Yet  the  later  work,  though  more  powerful,  is 
worse  fitted  for  the  stage  than  the  earlier.  It 
overtly  undertakes  to  be  less  a  play  than  a  dra- 
matic romance ;  the  author  himself  dismisses  it 
as  *'mon  drame  epique  et  plein  de  tumulte  et  de 
flamme."  The  chronicle  of  events  has  certain 
chapters,  rather  than  acts ;  one  closes  with  the 
murder  of  Rizzio,  a  second  with  that  of  Darnley, 
a  third  with  Mary's  marriage,  and  the  successive 
battles  leave  us  on  the  shore  of  Solway  Firth. 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  219 

No  work  of  Swinburne's  later  years  gave  him  so 
much  satisfaction  as  Bothwell.  It  was  his  con- 
stant pleasure  to  read  it  aloud,  and  he  often 
forgot,  in  doing  so,  how  quickly  the  time  passed. 
Through  one  burning  afternoon  in  the  summer  of 
1873  Lord  Morle}^  tells  me  that  he  listened  for 
five  solid  hours  to  a  reading  of  Bothwell,  and  I 
myself,  whose  leisure  was  of  less  value,  spent  one 
evening  of  the  same  year  from  dinner-time  to 
midnight,  in  company  with  Edward  Burne-Jones 
and  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy,  at  the  round  table 
at  3  Great  James  Street,  while  Swinburne,  lighted 
by  the  two  great  serpentine  candlesticks  he  had 
brought  with  him  from  the  Lizard,  shrieked, 
thundered,  whispered,  and  fluted  the  whole  of 
the  enormous  second  act. 

Very  little  of  1874  was  spent  in  London. 
After  a  Christmas  at  Holmwood,  Swinburne 
stayed  through  January  with  Jowett  at  the 
Lizard.  He  announced  himself  "in  love  for 
life  with  Kynance  Cove."  He  made  a  brief 
appearance  in  town  to  see  Bothwell  through  the 
press,  and  then  withdrew^  to  the  country  for  six 
months,  living  partly  at  Holmwood,  partly  at 
The  Orchard  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  where  in 
August  he  was  very  nearly  drowned  while 
swimming.  His  audacity  in  the  sea  always 
exceeded  his  strength,  though  never  his  endur- 
ance. At  Niton,  under  "the  right  auspices  of 
sun  and  flowers  and  solitude,"  he  read  Hugo's 
Quatre-vingt-treize,  and  was  disposed  to  agree 
with  Morley  that  it  is,  "at  least  from  some  points 
of  view,  the  most  divinely  beautiful  work  of  the 
great  Master,  who  has   written  me  since  I  last 


220  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

heard  from  you  such  a  letter  in  acknowledgment 
of  the  dedication  of  Bothwell  as  I  should  like  to 
show  you,  but  have  not  the  face  to  transcribe." 

It  was  at  this  time  that,  during  one  of  Swin- 
burne's visits  to  the  Master  of  Balliol,  Prince 
Leopold,  afterwards  Duke  of  Albany,  and  then 
an  undergraduate  of  one  and  twenty  at  Christ 
Church,  called  on  him,  but  missed  him.  The 
poet  returned  the  call,  but  the  prince  was  out. 
Swinburne,  how^ever,  was  made  aware  of  Prince 
Leopold's  "genuine  honest  youthful  interest  in 
Art  and  Letters,"  and  on  several  occasions 
expressed  much  sympathy  with  and  curiosity 
about  him.  He  characteristically  described  the 
prince  —  at  second-hand  and  probably  from 
Jow^ett's  relation,  —  as  "a  thoroughly  nice  boy, 
modest  and  simple  and  gentle,  devoted  to  books 
and  poetry,  without  pretence  or  affectation," 
and  in  1877  he  protested  against  certain  attacks 
made  against  the  character  and  capacity  of 
Prince  Leopold.  It  would  be  difficult  to  name 
any  other  Royal  Personage  —  except  Queen 
Victoria  herself  —  for  whom  Swinburne  ever 
expressed  any  complaisance. 

In  April  1874  he  was  greatly,  and  justly,  in- 
censed by  being  put  on  the  Byron  Memorial 
Committee  without  his  consent  having  been 
asked.  This  was  particularly  unfortunate  in 
face  of  the  excruciating  prejudice  against  Byron 
in  which  he  now  indulged.  The  leader  of 
this  rather  unlucky  movement  was  Trelawney, 
Shelley's  friend,  now  in  his  eightieth  year.  This 
picturesque  buccaneer  called  on  Swinburne  to 
apologise,  and  was  perfectly  successful  in  soothing 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  221 

his  outraged  feelings.  "The  piratical  old  hero 
calls  me  the  last  of  the  poets,  who  he  thought  all 
died  with  Byron.  ...  A  magnificent  old  Viking 
to  look  at."  Swinburne  found  very  old  men 
irresistible,  and  quite  a  friendship  sprang  up 
between  him  and  Trelawney.  All  this  time 
Swinburne  was  mainly  engaged  in  an  exhaustive 
study  of  Chapman,  which  was  begun  as  a  com- 
mission, because  Hotten  said  that  unless  Swin- 
burne wrote  an  introduction,  he  would  not  risk 
the  publishing  of  a  reprint  of  Chapman.  The 
money-payment  offered  by  Hotten  was  a  less 
inducement  to  Swinburne  than  the  prospect  of 
reviving  the  work  of  a  poet  whom  he  intensely 
admired.  Charles  Lamb  had  insisted,  in  terms 
of  high  enthusiasm,  upon  the  beauty  of  some 
passages  in  the  dramatic  writings  of  the  author 
of  Bussy  d'Amhois,  but  the  recovery  of  Chapman's 
text,  and  the  prominent  position  which  he  has 
since  taken  in  the  history  of  Elizabethan  litera- 
ture, are  mainly  due  to  Swinburne's  unwearied 
battle  on  behalf  of  Chapman's  claims. 

Some  of  my  earliest  recollections  of  the 
conversation  of  Swinburne  deal  with  his  im- 
passioned recommendation  of  the  profuse  and 
fiery  genius  of  Chapman.  On  one  of  my  first 
visits  to  him,  I  remember  that  he  read  aloud 
to  me,  with  extreme  vivacity,  a  monstrous 
tirade  from  The  Revenge.  I  was  not  —  and 
am  not  now  —  able  to  share  without  reserve 
his  noble  rage,  and  several  months  later  in  a 
letter  dated  February  21,  1874,  I  was  subjected 
again  to  stern  reproof  for  my  "obstinate  refusal" 
to  do  justice  "to   Chapman  —  above  all  to  the 


2!22  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

great  cycle  of  French  'Histories,'  which  over- 
flows with  genius."  These  views  he  was  then 
recording  in  full  and  final  shape  in  the  elaborate 
essay  which  wjis  prefixed  to  Heme  Shepherd's 
reprint,  and  Avas  more  luxuriously  printed  by 
itself  in  the  volume  called  George  Chapmaii  : 
A  Critical  Essay,  published  at  the  close  of  1874. 
The  energy  and  ardour  with  which  he  worked 
upon  the  original  text  of  these  plays,  which 
was  excessively  corrupt,  affected  Swinburne's 
health  and  particularly  his  eyesight  unfavour- 
ably; and  he  was  persuaded  to  relax  during 
part  at  least  of  the  following  year. 

It  was  after  a  beneficial  rest  that  his  cousin 
Mr.  Mitford  (Lord  Redesdale),  who  had  recently 
returned  from  a  long  diplomatic  exile  in  the  Far 
East,  miet  him  for  the  first  time  since  their  school- 
days. Lord  Redesdale  writes  to  me  about  a 
small  dinner-party  at  Whistler's  : 

I  was  very  much  struck  by  Swinburne's  appearance, 
the  years  had  changed  him  so  little.  He  had  still  the 
delicate  features  of  a  child.  He  looked  so  young  that 
had  it  not  been  for  the  scanty  beard,  thin  and  straggling, 
that  seemed  quite  unnatural,  as  if  it  had  been  not  very 
skilfully  stuck  on  by  some  theatrical  Simmonds,  he  would 
have  been  the  very  Algernon  of  the  'fifties.  The  illusion 
was  kept  up  by  the  gentle  music  of  his  voice,  as  caressing 
as  I  had  known  it  a  quarter  of  a  century  earlier.  After 
dinner  we  sat  together  for  a  long  while  talking  over  the 
sunshine  of  boyhood,  two  old  schoolfellows  content  to 
chatter  about  Eton,  Windsor,  the  unforgettable  joys  of 
the  Thames,  with  now  and  then  a  dip  into  the  family  story. 
When  we  parted  it  was  with  an  eagerly  expressed  resolve 
to  meet  again  as  soon  as  possible,  but  alas  !  that  never  came 
off.     Swinburne  fell  ill,  his  doctor  kept  him  in  prison,  and, 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  223 

once  more  and  until  the  end,  we  drifted  apart,  not  to  meet 
again  on  this  side  of  the  Styx. 

It  was  on  the  completion  of  the  critical  essay 
on  Chapman  that  Swinburne  was  first  fired  with 
the  notion  of  producing  a  complete  study  of 
the  whole  series  of  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean 
dramatists.  This  occupied  his  thoughts  until 
the  very  close  of  his  life,  and  he  left  the  scheme 
uncompleted.  It  slowly  matured  in  the  form 
of  a  book  in  several  volumes,  to  be  entitled 
The  Age  of  Shakespeare.  This  was  still  unfinished 
when  he  died.  Swinburne  had  no  intention  of 
delaying  it  so  long.  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise  has  dis- 
covered by  a  memorandum  in  Swinburne's  hand- 
writing that  this  second  series  was  to  consist  of 
essays  on  Chapman,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
Massinger,  Day,  Shirley,  Brome,  Nabbes,  Daven- 
port and  (once  more)  Marlowe.  Most  of  these 
were  in  type  when  he  died,  and  the  Nabbes  and 
Marlowe  were  printed  privately  by  Mr.  Wise  in 
1914.  This  collection,  therefore,  which  Swinburne 
began  to  compose  more  than  forty  years  ago, 
and  on  the  completion  of  which  his  heart  was 
deeply  set,  may  yet  see  the  light  in  the  form  which 
he  desired. 

Soon  after  the  beginning  of  1875,  when  he 
was  staying  with  Jowett  at  Ashfield  House, 
West  Malvern,  I  had  happened  to  point  out  to 
Algernon  in  one  of  my  letters  that  he  had  allowed 
the  centenary  of  Walter  Savage  Landor's  birth  to 
pass  unnoticed.  Centenaries  commonly  did  pass 
unnoticed  in  those  days.  In  his  reply  (January 
30),  he  expressed  himself  extremely  vexed  that 
he  should  have  missed  this  historical  landmark. 


224    ALGERNON   CHARLES   S\YINBURNE 

but  pointed  out  to  me  that,  in  less  than  a  fort- 
night, another  event  would  take  place,  the 
anniversary  of  Charles  Lamb's  birth.  He  sug- 
gested that  we  might  commemorate  with  the 
same  libations  both  the  great  men,  who  loved 
and  admired  eacli  other  in  life,  and  whose 
memories,  he  thought,  might  fitly  and  gracefully 
be  mingled  after  death  in  our  affectionate 
recollection. 

Accordingly,  he  undertook  to  organise  for  the 
10th  of  February  what  he  called  "our  Passover 
feast  in  honour  of  a  Lamb  quite  other  than 
Paschal,"  and  proposed  to  come  up  to  town 
specially  for  the  purpose  of  making  arrangements. 
I  think  it  was  the  only  time  in  his  whole  life  that 
Swinburne  ever  "organised"  anything;  he  was 
not  gifted  in  a  practical  direction.  How^ever, 
he  took  up  this  Charles  Lamb  dinner  very 
seriously,  and  came  to  town  on  Monday,  the  8th, 
to  settle  all  the  details.  He  would  not  allow 
me  to  help  him  at  all:  "Leave  it  to  me!"  he 
said,  in  his  grandest  manner.  Yet  the  dinner 
did  come  off.  It  was  a  rough  entertainment,  and 
the  guests  were  few,  but  it  did  come  off.  There 
were  but  five  of  us  who  sat  down  to  meat.  There 
was  Swinburne,  of  course,  at  the  head  of  the 
table,  looking  very  small  in  an  immense  arm- 
chair, but  preserving  a  mien  of  rare  solemnity. 
There  was  our  dear  and  ever-cheerful  William 
Minto,  of  Aberdeen,  who  left  us  so  prematurely 
in  1893 ;  there  was  that  rather  trying  journalist, 
Thomas  Purnell,  who  has  also  long  been  dead, 
and  there  were  Theodore  Watts  and  myself. 
That  was  the  company,  fit,  perhaps,  but  certainly 


From  a  drawing  from  life,  in  1874,  by  Carlo  Pellegrini 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  225 

few.  We  met  in  a  very  old-fashioned  hotel  in 
Soho,  and  had  a  coarse,  succulent  dinner  in  the 
mid-Victorian  style,  very  much  I  daresay  in 
Charles  Lamb's  own  taste.  The  extreme  dignity 
of  Swinburne  is  the  feature  of  the  dinner  which 
remains  most  conspicuously  in  my  memory ; 
he  sank  so  low  in  his  huge  arm-chair,  and  sat 
so  bolt  upright  in  it,  that  his  white  face,  with 
its  great  aureole  of  red  hair,  beamed  over  the 
table  like  the  rising  sun.  It  was  magnificent  to 
see  him,  when  Purnell,  who  was  a  reckless  speaker, 
"went  too  far,"  bringing  back  the  conversation 
into  the  paths  of  decorum.  He  was  so  severe, 
so  unwontedly  and  phenomenally  severe,  that 
Purnell  sulked,  and  taking  out  a  churchwarden 
left  us  at  table  and  smoked  in  the  chimney- 
corner.  Our  shock  was  .the  bill  —  portentous ! 
Swinburne,  in  "organising,"  had  made  no  arrange- 
ment as  to  price,  and  when  we  trooped  out  into 
the  frosty  midnight,  there  were  five  long  faces 
of  impecunious  men  of  letters. 

The  year  1875  was  marked  by  what  appeared 
to  be  an  extraordinary  activity,  but  in  fact 
Swinburne's  publications  were  more  the  result 
of  previous  labour  than  the  evidence  of  what 
was  actual.  For  instance,  his  essay  prefixed  to 
the  reprint  of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren  was 
a  re-cast  of  a  sketch  written  about  1861.  His 
volume  of  poems,  ultimately  issued  as  Songs 
of  Two  Nations,  was  a  reprinted  collection  of 
A  Song  of  Italy,  Ode  on  the  French  Republic,  and 
Dirae.  Essays  and  Studies  was  a  collection  of 
his  principal  prose  monographs,  to  which  he 
merely  added  a  preface  and  sundry  notes.     The 


226  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

DeviVs  Due  was  a  pseudonymous  attack  on 
Buchanan  reprinted  from  the  Examiner;  Au- 
guste  Vacqucric,  pubHshed  in  French  in  Novem- 
ber of  this  year,  was  an  improvised  tribute 
of  friendship.  But  Swinburne's  real  activity 
in  1875  was  not  perceived  by  the  public.  He 
was  hard  at  work  on  a  history  of  the  metrical 
progress  of  Shakespeare.  This  "history"  was 
never  published  in  the  form  which  Swinburne 
originally  intended,  that  is  to  say,  exclusively 
from  the  prosodical  point  of  view.  But  he  must 
be  regarded  as  devoting  the  best  of  his  leisure 
and  the  keenest  of  his  penetration  from  this  time 
until  the  publication  of  A  Study  of  Shakespeare 
on  a  technical  examination  of  the  work  of  that 
poet.  In  a  letter  to  me  (Jan.  31,  1875)  his  purpose 
is  clearly  laid  down : 

I  am  now  at  work  on  my  long-designed  essay  or  study 
on  the  metrical  progress  or  development  of  Shakespeare 
as  traceable  by  ear  and  not  by  finger,  and  the  general 
changes  of  tone  and  stages  of  mind  expressed  or  involved 
in  this  change  or  progress  of  style.  I  need  hardly  say 
that  I  begin  with  a  massacre  of  the  pedants  worthy  of 
celebration  in  an  Icelandic  saga,  —  "a  murder  grim  and 
great."  I  leave  the  "finger-counters  and  finger-casters" 
without  a  finger  to  count  on  or  an  (ass's)  ear  to  wag. 
Which  do  you  think  would  be  the  best  title  for  this  essay 
—  The  Three  Stages  of  Shakespeare,  or  The  Progress  of 
Shakespeare?  If  not  (as  I  fear  it  is)  too  pretentious,  the 
latter  would  perhaps  be,  —  or  sound,  —  best. 

Two  months  later  he  puts  the  same  question 
to  Mr.  John  Morley,  and  ultimately  neither  title 
proved  appropriate  to  his  scheme.  In  March 
he  says : 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  227 

I  am  still  engaged  on  the  period  where  the  influence 
of  rhyme  and  the  influence  of  Marlowe  were  fighting,  or 
throwing  dice,  for  the  (dramatic)  soul  of  Shakespeare. 
No  one  I  believe  has  yet  noted  how  long  and  hard  the  fight 
of  the  game  was. 

A  first  instalment  of  this  work  appeared  in 
the  Fortnightly  Review  for  May  1875,  but  the 
harsh  reception  it  met  with  from  Shakespearean 
experts  somewhat  discouraged  the  author. 
However,  in  January  1876  Mr.  John  Morley 
published  a  second,  in  which  Swinburne  contro- 
verted the  views  that  Spedding,  after  consultation 
with  Tennyson,  had  put  forward  in  1850  regarding 
the  date  and  authorship  of  Henry  VIII.  These 
views  had  been  adopted  by  the  New  Shakspere 
Society,  which  Furnivall  had  lately  founded. 
A  ridiculous  controversy  ensued,  in  our  regret 
at  which  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  Furnivall 
struck  the  first  blow.  Swinburne  replied  in  a 
public  letter  which  was  a  declaration  of  war, 
and  the  contest  went  rumbling  on  for  six  or  seven 
years.  Its  manifestations,  however,  did  not  be- 
come acute  until  1880,  and  we  may  leave  con- 
sideration of  it  for  the  moment. 

In  July,  however,  Swinburne  turned  from  the 
exclusive  contemplation  of  Shakespeare  and  his 
commentators  to  the  production  of  a  new  poem. 
During  a  visit  paid  to  Jowett  at  West  Malvern, 
in  that  month,  he  sketched  the  plot  of  Erechtheus 
and  wrote  the  first  great  chorus  of  the  Athenian 
Elders.  He  finished  the  play  in  November, 
sent  it  immediately  to  press,  and  issued  it  soon 
after  New  Year's  Day,  1876.  It  is  interesting 
to  contrast  the  smoothness  of  composition  and 


228  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

the  regularity  with  which  the  scenes  of  Erechtheus 
passed  from  Swinburne's  pen,  with  the  hesitations 
and  innumerable  false  starts  which  delayed  the 
progress  of  most  of  his  earlier  works,  and  were 
still  delaying  that  of  Tristram.  This  autumn 
he  was  in  a  very  happy  frame  of  mind, 
whether  at  Holmwood,  or  through  a  delightful 
September  and  October  at  Southwold,  on  the 
Suffolk  coast,  with  Theodore  Watts,  and  he  was 
free  from  various  pecuniary  burdens  and  anxieties. 
It  was  an  oasis  in  these  rather  desert  years,  and 
the  influence  of  it  may  be  felt  in  the  technical  per- 
fection of  Erechtheus.  This  is  in  several  respects 
the  most  organic  of  Swinburne's  writings,  though 
it  may  never  have  been  found  by  the  general 
reader  the  most  interesting;  while  it  can  scarcely 
be  denied  that  in  the  general  conduct  of  this 
tragedy  he  rises,  in  an  altitude  of  moral  emotion 
that  he  reaches  nowhere  else,  to  an  atmosphere 
which  few  modern  poets  have  even  attempted 
to  breathe. 

The  theme  of  this  drama  is  of  the  quintessence 
of  traged3%  and  the  tale  is  rapidly  conducted  on 
a  very  high  plane  of  heroic  human  virtue.  It 
combines  a  tender  and  thrilling  treatment  of 
emotion  with  an  appeal  to  civic  patriotism  in  the  - 
truest  spirit  of  antiquity.  It  is  the  most  Greek 
of  all  the  compositions  of  Swinburne,  because  it 
follows,  with  the  greatest  success,  closely  and 
yet  vividly,  the  exact  classical  models.  It  is 
not  merely  Greek,  but  it  is  passionately  Athenian, 
and  Athens  is  considered,  not  as  a  theme  for 
antiquarian  curiosity,  but  as  the  living  symbol 
of  the  virtue  of  citizenship.     Swinburne  was  never 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  229 

tired  of  reciting,  like  a  thrush  singing  Greek,  and 
with  gestures  of  ecstasy,  the  odes  in  praise  of 
Athenian  hberty  which  break  up  the  scenes  of 
the  PersoB.  The  state  of  Athens  in  the  fourth 
century  B.C.  appeared  to  him  to  approach  his 
ideal  Republic  more  nearly  than  any  other 
ancient  or  modern  institution.  Erechtheus  may 
in  this  respect  be  considered  in  relation  with  the 
ode  entitled  "Athens,"  written  by  Swinburne 
in  1881,  although  the  latter  is  somewhat  marred 
by  the  faults  of  verbosity  and  vociferation, 
which  had  during  those  years  grown  upon  him. 
But  in  ode  and  drama  alike,  as  well  as  elsewhere 
in  Swinburne's  writings,  there  is  full  evidence 
of  the  enthusiasm  with  which  he  hailed  the 
Athenian  polity  as  the  finest  example  in  the 
world's  history  of  the  ideal  commonwealth  — 

The  fruitful,  immortal,  anointed,  adored 
Dear  city  of  men  without  master  or  lord, 
Fair  fortress  and  fostress  of  sons  born  free. 

*'I  praise  the  gods  for  Athens,"  Swinburne  said 
all  his  life. 

The  Erechtheum,  as  we  may  read  in  Pausanias, 
was  one  of  the  most  sacred  places  in  Athens. 
It  stood  on  the  Acropolis,  and  its  salient  portion 
was  the  temple  of  Athene  Polias,  with  three 
altars,  one  of  which  was  dedicated  to  Poseidon 
and  Erechtheus.  This  latter  gives  name  to 
Swinburne's  drama.  He  was  a  king  of  Attica 
in  legendary  times,  descended  from  a  still  more 
mythical  monarch,  who  was  the  son  of  Earth. 
Hence  the  autochthonous  origin  of  the  family, 
a  reference  to  which  is  essential  to  our  compre- 


230    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

hension  of  the  story.  Athens  was  attacked 
by  the  Thracians  and  hard  pressed,  when  an 
oracle  said  that  the  only  salvation  possible  for 
the  city  was  the  sacrifice  of  Chthonia,  the  daughter 
of  the  king  who  had  sprung  from  the  soil  itself. 
Erechtheus  takes  a  less  prominent  part  in  the 
play  than  his  Queen  Praxithea  and  their  virginal 
victim.  The  noble  endurance  of  the  Mother  and 
the  delicate  devotion  of  Chthonia  are  contrasted 
with  a  grace  and  pathos  which  are  above  praise. 
Events  move  rapidly ;  the  innocent  blood  is 
poured  forth,  and  "the  holiness  o^  Athens"  is 
redeemed ;  but  Erechtheus  himself  is  slain  by 
lightning  at  the  moment  of  victory,  and  the 
sisters  of  Chthonia  decline  to  survive  her.  The 
august  figure  of  the  stricken  Praxithea  stands 
alone  on  the  stage  for  a  moment,  till  Pallas 
Athena  herself  descends  and  embraces  all  Athens 
in  a  healing  benediction.  Erechtheus  is  less 
romantic  and  purer  in  its  Hellenism  than  Atalanta 
in  Calydon,  but  the  stern  outlines  of  its  emotion 
are  richly  adorned  by  the  lyrics  of  a  chorus  of 
Athenian  Elders,  of  which  the  most  celebrated 
is  that  which  describes  with  inimitable  brio  the 
mythical  rape  of  Chthonia's  elder  sister  Oreithyia 
by  Boreas.  These  choruses  display  to  the  full 
the  poet's  gift  of  splendour,  and  they  present 
as  well  a  reserve  and  purity  of  language,  a  cool 
beauty  which  he  more  rarely  attains. 

Swinburne's  hatred  of  Euripides  was  never 
expressed  more  violently  than  when  he  was 
writing  Erechtheus,  perhaps  because  he  was  unable 
to  forget  that  he  was  using  a  theme  which  had 
already  passed  through  the  hands  of  Euripides. 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  231 

Indeed,  he  was  not  merely  fully  aware  of,  but 
grudgingly  consented  to  adopt  the  argument 
saved  for  us  by  the  orator  Lycurgus  and  the  long 
fragment,  a  speech  of  Praxithea,  which  are  enough 
to  give  us  some  inkling  of  Euripides'  treatment. 
A  clumsy  reviewer  described  Swinburne's  play 
as  "a  translation  from  Euripides,"  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  the  supposed  original  disappeared, 
save  for  the  bit  preserved,  by  Lycurgus,  before 
the  Christian  era.  Swinburne  was  too  furious  to 
see  how  funny  this  blunder  was,  but  it  provoked 
from  him  a  private  protest  of  great  importance. 
In  a  letter  to  a  friend  (January  2,  1876)  he  said : 

A  fourth-form  boy  could  see  that  as  far  as  Erechtheus 
can  be  said  to  be  modelled  after  anybody,  it  is  modelled 
throughout  after  the  earliest  style  of  ^schylus.  ,  .  . 
I  did  introduce  (instead  of  a  hint  and  a  verse  or  two 
acknowledged  in  my  notes)  a  good  deal  of  the  "long 
and  noble  fragment"  referred  to,  into  Praxithea's  first 
long  speech  —  but  the  translated  verses  (I  must  say  it) 
were  so  palpably  and  pitiably  inferior  both  in  thought 
and  expression  to  the  rest  that  the  first  persons  I  read 
that  part  of  the  play  to  in  MS.,  knowing  nothing  of 
Greek,  .  .  .  remarked  the  falling  off  at  once  —  the  dis- 
crepancy and  blot  on  the  face  of  my  work  —  so  I  excised 
the  Sophist  —  .  .  only  keeping  a  hint  or  two,  and  one 
or  two  of  his  best  lines.  If  this  sounds  outrecuidafit 
or  savouring  of  "surquedry,"  you  may  remember  that  I 
always  have  maintained  it  is  far  easier  to  overtop 
Euripides  by  the  head  and  shoulder  than  to  come  up  to 
the  waist  of  Sophocles  or  the  knee  of  ^schylus. 

He  preserved  this  prejudice  against  Euripides 
from  school-time  to  the  grave,  and  he  always 
asserted  that  he  was  supported  in  it  by  the 
conversation    of    Jowett.     Neither    the    stoicism 


232  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

nor  the  scepticism  of  Euripides  was  agreeable 
to  Swinburne,  and  what  did  not  please  him  ex- 
cessively he  was  apt  to  reject  altogether.  He 
detested  the  realism  of  "the  Sophist,"  but 
perhaps  a  few  Euripidean  touches  would  have 
preserved  Erechtheus  from  what  is  really  its  only 
blemish,  a  too  marmoreal  uniformity  of  diction. 
During  the  next  three  years  there  is  hardly 
anything  to  record  of  the  external  life  of  the 
poet.  He  became  more  and  more  isolated  from 
human  companionship,  and  more  and  more 
buried  in  books.  This  was  the  most  painful 
portion  of  his  career,  during  which  he  suffered 
from  alternations  of  boisterous  excitement,  which 
his  few  faithful  friends  were  unable  to  repress, 
and  of  dark  melancholia  which  they  were  power- 
less to  dispel.  Hitherto  his  visits  to  Holmwood 
had  always  enabled  him  to  regain  the  serenity 
of  his  spirits,  but  this  resource  also  now  began 
to  fail  him.  It  was  from  Holmwood  that  he 
wrote  to  a  friend  (March  27,  1876)  of  "the  dull 
monotonous  puppet-show  of  my  life,  which  often 
strikes  me  as  too  barren  of  action  or  enjoyment 
to  be  much  worth  holding  on  to."  The  great 
excitements  of  literature,  which  had  supported 
him  at  such  an  altitude  for  so  long,  now  seemed 
to  lose  their  stimulus;  he  could  speak  of  the 
spiritual  pleasure  of  verse  as  only  "better  than 
nothingness,  or  at  least  seeming  better  than 
nothingness."  His  lyrical  gift  had  not,  however, 
failed  him,  though  at  this  time  it  often  took  on  a 
melancholy  air,  well  presented  by  the  sad  and 
enchanting  "Forsaken  Garden,"  which  was 
written    in    March    1876.     He    who,    ten    years 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  233 

earlier,  had  entered  with  such  generous  enthusiasm 
into  the  hopes  and  efforts  of  his  most  stirring 
contemporaries,  now  cut  himself  off  from  all 
such  companionships;  "of  the  w^orld  of  letters 
I  know  personally  less  than  little,"  he  wrote  to  an 
inquirer. 

He  stimulated  his  energies  with  controversy, 
and  A  Note  on  the  Muscovite  Crusade  in  prose  and 
A  Ballad  of  Bulgarie  (the  latter  not  printed  till 
1893),  were  contributions  to  a  study  of  the 
Balkan  War  of  1876 ;  the  former  disagreeable 
in  tone,  the  latter  a  lively  and  amusing  diatribe, 
showing  great  vivacity  of  mind  and  violence  of 
temper;  neither  is  of  considerable  value.  Swin- 
burne was  now  engaged  in  translating  the  poems 
of  Villon,  and  in  making  a  close  study  of  that 
poet's  text  and  language,  by  such  lights  as  were 
at  that  date  available.  In  May  of  this  year 
he  went  with  John  Nichol  to  Guernsey  and  Sark, 
a  memorable  visit  which  gave  him  the  extremity 
of  pleasure.  When  he  returned  to  London  in 
June  he  appeared  to  have  been  dipped  in  the 
waters  of  Youth,  so  much  had  he  regained  of  his 
vigour,  his  sweetness,  and  his  cheerfulness. 

The  Channel  Islands  immediately  inspired  him 
with  the  old  enthusiasm  for  the  sea,  and  he  now 
wrote  "The  Garden  of  Cymodoce"  and  other 
powerful  lyrics  in  praise  of  Sark,  "qui  depasse," 
he  wrote  to  Stephane  Mallarme  (June  1,  1876), 
"meme  les  eloges  d'Auguste  Vacquerie.  Moi, 
nourril  aux  bords  de  la  mer,  je  n'ai  jamais  rien 
vu  de  si  charmant."  He  declared  that  he  would 
be  King  of  Sark.  He  became  quite  infatuated 
with   the   enchantment   of   this   rocky   islet,   and 


234  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

I  have  memories  of  embarrassing  walks  with 
him  in  the  streets  of  London  late  at  night, 
when  crescendo  praises  of  the  glorious  beauty 
of  Sark,  delivered  at  the  top  of  his  voice  in  a 
very  shrill  key,  attracted  the  unfavourable  atten- 
tion of  the  police.  But  in  August,  after  two 
months  of  London,  he  sank  very  low  again.  He 
attributed  his  loss  of  health  and  spirits  to  having 
been  "poisoned  by  perfumes."  A  lady,  at  whose 
house  he  had  spent  a  night,  had,  he  said,  sought  to 
do  him  honour  by  filling  his  bedroom  with  great 
Japanese  lilies  in  blossom,  and  the  poet  had  waked 
in  the  middle  of  the  night  in  a  delirium,  rousing 
the  household  with  his  shrieks.  Whatever  the 
cause,  he  was  certainly  extremely  ill,  and  again  a 
long  retirement  at  Holmwood  proved  the  remedy. 
He  was  seen  no  more  in  London  until  the  spring 
of  1877. 

On  the  4th  of  March  his  father.  Admiral  Swin- 
burne, died  and  was  buried  at  Bonchurch  beside 
the  daughter  whom  he  lost  in  1863.  As  it  was 
said  at  the  time,  and  has  been  repeated,  that 
Admiral  Swinburne's  Will  contained  reflections 
on  his  eldest  son,  w^hich  were  painful  to  the  poet's 
feelings  and  tended  to  estrange  him  from  his 
family,  it  is  perhaps  well  to  say  that  these 
rumours  were  wholly  unfounded.  It  is  true  that 
the  Admiral  named  as  executors  his  brother-in- 
law,  Sir  Henry  Percy  Gordon,  and  his  younger 
son,  Edward  Swinburne  (who  died  in  1891). 
But  Algernon's  notorious  inaptitude  for  any 
species  of  business  was  quite  sufficient  to  account 
for  that.  By  the  Will,  which  was  signed  in  May 
1875,  the  Admiral  left  Algernon  £5000,  and  the 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  235 

ultimate  possession  of  his  books,  which  he 
valued  at  £2000,  so  that  if  any  difference  at  all 
was  made  between  his  children,  it  was  a  little 
to  his  eldest  son's  advantage.  Algernon  returned 
to  Holmwood  after  the  funeral,  but  for  a  very 
short  time.  He  refrained  from  going  back  there 
any  more,  and  when  the  summer  of  1877  came 
round,  he  went  to  Southwold  in  Suffolk  again, 
instead  of  going  to  Holmwood,  and  then  returned 
to  London.  In  November  of  the  same  year  Lady 
Jane  Swinburne  told  Messrs.  Chatto  and  Windus, 
his  publishers,  that  she  did  not  know  her  son's 
address. 

His  principal  occupation  or  diversion  for  some 
time  had  been  a  study  on  the  character  and 
writings  of  a  novelist  for  whom  he  cultivated 
a  deep  devotion.  On  his  return  to  London 
he  completed  his  Note  on  Charlotte  Bronte, 
a  "note"  which  extended  to  a  volume. 
The  object  of  this  work  was  controversial ;  it 
was  intended  to  undermine  the  reputation  of 
George  Eliot,  which  was  particularly  obnoxious 
to  Swinburne,  by  insistence  on  the  superior 
claims  of  Charlotte  Bronte,  who  was  being  unduly 
neglected.  So  far  so  well,  and  Swinburne  deserves 
great  credit  for  having  set  the  pendulum  swinging 
back  in  favour  of  the  Brontes.  Nor  was  his 
praise  of  Charlotte,  though  expressed  in  dithy- 
rambic  language,  excessive.  It  sweeps  away 
The  Professor  and  pronounces  Shirley  essentially 
a  failure,  while  basing  the  triumphant  claim  of 
Charlotte  Bronte  to  eternal  fame  on  Jane  Eyre 
and  Villette.  Swinburne  took  the  opportunity 
to  celebrate  the  genius  of  Emily,  and  criticism 


236  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

has  in  the  main  accepted  a  view,  which  he  was 
the  earHest  to  state  with  vigour.  The  Note, 
however,  in  spite  of  much  that  is  amusing  and 
vahiable,  is  not  a  success.  It  marks  a  stage  in 
the  decHne,  or  at  least  in  the  ossification,  of 
Swinburne's  genius.  His  firmness  has  become 
arrogance,  his  zeal  violence,  his  chiaro  a  blaze 
and  his  oscuro  pitch-darkness.  There  are  offences 
against  taste ;  he  seriously  grieved  a  number 
of  his  own  friends  by  calling  George  Eliot  "an 
Amazon  thrown  sprawling  over  the  crupper  of 
her  spavined  and  spur-galled  Pegasus."  Indeed 
there  is  ample  proof  offered  by  the  Note  of  1877 
that  Swinburne  at  the  age  of  forty  had  adopted 
mannerisms  of  style  and  temper  which  could 
not  but  injure  his  future  writings  in  prose.  If 
anj^  one  made  this  prediction  at  the  time,  it  was 
only  too  sadly  confirmed  by  the  results  of  the 
next  three  decades. 

At  this  time  he  lived  in  one  very  large  sitting- 
room  and  a  bedroom  on  the  first  floor  of  3  Great 
James  Street,  Bedford  Row,  and  here  he  had 
arranged  his  favourite  possessions.  Among  these 
were  a  collection  of  precious  glass,  a  wonderful 
mosaic  top-table,  a  swinging  pier-glass  before 
which  the  poet  would  perform  a  sort  of  solemn 
dance,  and  the  famous  serpentine  candlesticks. 
These  objects  were  in  curious  discord  with  the 
rest  of  the  lodging-house  furniture.  He  was 
accustomed  to  draw  the  particular  attention  of 
visitors  to  each  of  them  in  turn,  like  a  showman, 
saying  of  the  top-table,  "Great  God,  how  beauti- 
ful it  is!"  or  of  the  candlesticks,  "Lovely! 
lovely!"  with  a  strong  indrawing  of  the  breath. 


THE   MIDDLE    YEARS  237 

Mr.  W.  Lestocq,  the  actor,  who  lived  in  the  same 
house  at  this  time,  and  who  often  was  of  use  to 
him,  recalls  that  he  seldom  entered  Swinburne's 
sitting-room  without  the  poet's  calling  his  atten- 
tion to  the  portrait  of  Orsini,  the  identical  pastel 
or  print  which  had  adorned  his  rooms  at  Oxford, 
*'and  that  frequently,  though  it  hung  much  above 
his  head,  he  would  jump  up  and  try  to  kiss  it." 
He  entertained  his  particular  friends  here  rather 
frequently,  but  these  feasts  were  apt  to  be  agitat- 
ing affairs.  The  following  extract  from  my  own 
journal  may  be  taken  to  illustrate  his  life  at  this 
time : 

June  11th,  1877.  A.  C.  S.  having  summoned  me  to 
go  to  his  rooms  on  Saturday  evening  for  the  particular 
purpose  of  hearing  a  new  Essay  he  has  written  on 
Charlotte  Bronte,  I  duly  arrived  at  3  Great  James  Street 
about  8.  Algernon  was  standing  alone  in  the  middle 
of  the  floor,  with  one  hand  in  the  breast  of  his  coat,  and 
the  other  jerking  at  his  side.  He  had  an  arrangement 
of  chairs,  with  plates  and  glasses  set  on  the  table,  as  if 
for  a  party.  He  looked  like  a  conjurer,  who  was  waiting 
for  his  audience.  He  referred  vaguely  to  "the  others," 
and  said  that  while  they  delayed  in  coming,  he  would 
read  me  a  new  poem  he  had  just  finished,  called  "In  the 
Bay,"  which  he  said  he  should  solemnly  dedicate  to  the 
spirit  of  Marlowe.  He  brushed  aside  some  of  the  glasses 
and  plates,  and  sat  dowTi  to  read.  The  poem  was  very 
magnificent,  but  rather  difficult  to  follow,  and  very 
long.  It  took  some  time  to  read;  and  still  no  one  came. 
As  the  evening  was  slipping  away,  I  asked  him  presently 
whether  the  reading  of  C.  Bronte  should  not  begin, 
whereupon  he  answered,  "I'm  expecting  Watts  and 
Ned  Burne-Jones  and  Philip  Marston,  and  —  some  other 
men.  I  hope  they'll  come  soon."  We  waited  a  little 
while    in    silence,    in    the    twilight,    and    then    Swinburne 


238    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

said,  "I  hope  I  didn't  forget  to  ask  them!"  He  then 
trotted  or  glided  into  his  bedroom,  and  what  he  referred 
to  there  I  don't  know,  but  almost  instantly  he  came  out 
and  said  cheerfully,  "Ah !  I  find  I  didn't  ask  any  of 
those  men,  so  we'll  begin  at  once."  He  lighted  his  two 
great  candlesticks  of  serpentine  and  started.  He  soon 
got  tired  of  reading  the  Essay,  and  turned  to  the  delights, 
of  which  he  never  wearies,  of  his  unfinished  novel.  He 
read  two  long  passages,  the  one  a  ride  over  a  moorland 
by  night,  the  other  the  death  of  his  heroine,  Lesbia 
Brandon.  After  reading  aloud  all  these  things  with 
his  amazing  violence,  he  seemed  quite  exhausted,  and 
sank  in  a  kind  of  dream  into  the  corner  of  his  broad 
sofa,  his  tiny  feet  pressed  tight  together,  and  I  stole 
away. 

He  was  very  solitary  at  this  time.  His 
breakfast  was  served  to  him  in  his  rooms,  but 
he  had  to  go  out  for  his  other  meals,  which  he 
used  to  do  with  mechanical  regularity.  It  was  a 
curious  spectacle  to  see  him  crossing  Holborn 
on  his  way  to  the  London  Restaurant,  which  then 
existed  at  the  corner  of  Chancery  Lane.  Swin- 
burne, with  hanging  hands,  and  looking  straight 
before  him,  would  walk  across  like  an  automaton 
between  the  vans  and  cabs,  and  that  he  was 
never  knocked  down  seemed  extraordinary.  Oc- 
casionally he  took  Watts  or  myself  to  dine  with 
him,  but  seldom,  and  he  never  made  any  casual 
acquaintances.  Mr.  R.  B.  Haldane  (now  Lord 
Haldane)  tells  me  that  he  happened  to  go  into 
the  London  Restaurant  one  day  in  1877.  \Snien 
he  had  given  his  order  for  luncheon,  the  waiter 
leaned  down  and  whispered,  "Do  you  see  that 
gentleman.  Sir?"  Haldane  then  perceived  a 
little  gentleman  sitting  bolt  upright  at  a  table  by 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  239 

himself,  with  nothing  before  him  but  a  heaped-up 
dish  of  asparagus  and  a  bowl  of  melted  butter. 
His  head,  with  a  great  shock  of  red  hair  round  it, 
was  bent  a  little  on  one  side,  and  his  eyes  were 
raised  in  a  sort  of  unconscious  rapture,  while  he 
held  the  asparagus,  stick  by  stick,  above  his 
face,  and  dropped  it  down  as  far  as  it  »would  go. 
*' That's  the  poet  Swinburne,  Sir!"  the  waiter 
said,  "and  he  comes  here  on  purpose  to  enjoy 
our  asparagus." 

In  May  1878,  Victor  Hugo  invited  Swinburne 
to  Paris,  to  be  present,  as  the  official  representative 
of  English  poetry,  at  the  centenary  of  the  death 
of  Voltaire.  But  the  letter  arrived  at  a  moment 
of  suffering  and  depression,'  and  Swinburne  could 
not  find  a  companion.  A  second  invitation 
suggested  that  Swinburne  should  himself  have 
a  welcome  in  Paris,  Mile.  Augusta  Holmes  having 
consented  to  put  some  of  his  poems  to  music 
for  a  public  performance,  at  which  Swinburne 
was  to  be  crowned  by  an  Academician.  What 
the  voice  of  Zeus  could  not  perform  was  not  likely 
to  be  wrought  by  a  siren,  and  Swinburne  abode 
wearily  in  3  Great  James  Street. 

The  texture  of  his  verse  now  showed  greater 
elasticity  and  freshness  than  that  of  his  prose. 
No  one  would  have  guessed  at  the  distracted 
and  even  alarming  physical  condition  of  the 
author  from  the  serene  volume  of  Poems  and 
Ballads:  Second  Series  which  he  published  in 
June  1878.  Not  a  few  of  Swinburne's  closest 
admirers  would,  indeed,  sooner  part  with  any 
other  of  his  books  than  with  this,  which  exhibits 
his  purely  lyrical  genius  in  its  most  amiable  and 


240    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

melodious  form.  It  was  dedicated  to  Richard 
Burton,  in  whose  company  and  in  that  of  Adelaide 
Sartoris  the  poet  had  spent  some  enchanting 
weeks  at  Vichy,  in  September  1869.  He  reminded 
his  friends  how 

Some  nine  years  gone,  as  we  dwelt  together 

In  the  sweet  hushed  heat  of  the  south  French  weather. 

Ere  autumn  fell  on  the  vine-tressed  hills 
Or  the  season  had  shed  one  rose-red  feather, 

while  Swinburne  and  Burton  stood  together  at 
the  Grand  Grille  at  Vichy,  the  poet  pledged  the 
traveller  in  a  beaker  of  hot  water,  and  promised 
that  his  next  book  of  songs  should  bear  the  name 
of  Burton : 

Nine  years  have  risen  and  eight  years  set 
Since  there  by  the  well-spring  our  hands  on  it  met : 
And  the  pledge  of  my  songs  that  were  then  to  be, 
I  could  wonder  not,  friend,  though  a  friend  should  forget. 

For  life's  helm  rocks  to  the  windward  and  lea, 
And  time  is  as  wind,  and  as  waves  are  we ; 

And  song  is  as  foam  that  the  sea-winds  fret, 
Though  the  thought  at  its  heart  should  be  deep  as  the  sea. 

The  sentiment  of  friendship  is  very  strongly 
marked  in  the  volume  of  1878,  and  is  displayed 
in  the  successive  elegies  which  distinguish  it 
from  other  collections  of  the  poet's  work.  Some 
of  these  have  already  been  mentioned,  but  they 
deserve  reconsideration.  The  poems  on  the 
deaths  of  Baudelaire,  of  Theophile  Gautier,  of 
Barry  Cornwall,  of  Lorimer  Graham  (*'Epicede"), 
of  Admiral  Swinburne  ("Inferiae")  are  amongst 
the  most  tender,  the  most  sincere,  and  the  most 
inspired  which  the  author  ever  composed.     More- 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  241 

over,  they  combine  with  an  elegiac  accent  of 
regret  a  formal  and  considered  analysis  of  work 
and  character.  The  three  first  of  those  just 
mentioned  rank  among  Swinburne's  most  ex- 
quisite pieces  of  criticism,  and  the  critical  elegy 
may  be  said  to  be  a  form  of  verse  which  he  prac- 
tically invented. 

But  the  Poems  and  Ballads  of  1878  is  also 
remarkable  as  containing  a  large  number  of 
pieces  in  which  the  melodj^  of  Swinburne's  verse 
reached  its  highest  refinement.  There  is  not 
here  a  question  of  the  torrent  of  palpitating  and 
trumpeting  music  which  fills  the  choruses  and 
odes  of  earlier  volumes,  nor  even  of  the  Cory  bant  ic 
dance-measures  of  the  poems  of  1866,  but  of 
a  delicate,  tremulous  melody  like  that  of  a 
nightingale,  poured  forth  in  a  stream  of  pensive 
but  not  dejected  enthusiasm.  This  witchery  of 
exquisite  sound,  the  tone  of  the  ^Eolian  harp, 
had  rarely  been  heard  before  in  Swinburne's 
poetry,  and  was  scarcely  ever  heard  in  it  again. 
It  is  found  here  in  its  most  harmonious  ecstasy 
in  such  magical  lyrics  as  "A  Forsaken  Garden," 
*'The  Year  of  the  Rose,"  "A  Ballade  of  Dream- 
land," and  "A  Vision  of  Spring  in  Winter." 

Of  "A  Ballade  of  Dreamland"  he  told  Miss 
Alice  Bird  that,  going  to  his  bedroom  early  one 
night,  he  sat  down  to  write  a  poem  with  the 
refrain,  "Only  the  song  of  a  secret  bird,"  but  that 
to  his  astonishment  and  disgust  the  words  would 
not  come.  He  got  into  bed,  savagely  uttering 
imprecations.  In  the  morning,  when  he  awoke 
with  rested  brain,  he  wrote  the  ballade  off 
without  a  halt.     He  described  to  her,  also,  the 


242    ALGERNON   CHxVRLES    SWINBURNE 

circumstances  in  which  ''A  Vision  of  Spring  in 
AVinter"  was  composed.  He  produced  the  three 
first  stanzas  in  his  sleep.  "I  was  not  dreaming," 
he  declared,  "nor  in  the  borderland  of  sleep, 
but  sound  asleep,"  when  the  ideas  were  born. 
He  woke  in  the  night,  and  jumping  out  of  bed, 
he  scribbled  the  verses  down.  He  expected  in 
the  morning  to  find  that  they  were  nonsense, 
but  no  alteration  of  the  verses  as  he  had  written 
them  was  needed,  and  then  he  added  the  four 
concluding  stanzas.  In  a  totally  different  key^ 
this  volume  presents  to  us  what  is  perhaps  the 
most  powerful  of  all  Swinburne's  lyrics  of  ex- 
perience, "At  a  Month's  End"  —  which  as  a 
parallel  between  storm  on  the  sea  and  passion 
in  the  soul  has  never  been  equalled. 

This  volume  of  1878,  which  was  remarkable, 
among  other  things,  as  containing  the  translations 
from  Frangois  Villon  on  which  Swinburne  had 
been  so  long  engaged,  was  originally  destined  to 
be  dedicated  to  William  Bell  Scott.  When  the 
poet  recalled  his  promise  to  Burton,  he  cancelled 
this  dedication  to  Scott,  which  remains  un- 
published. It  is  called  "Recollections,"  and 
contains  some  lines  of  great  beauty.  It  opens 
thus : 

Years  have  sped  from  us  under  the  sun, 
Through  blossom  and  snow-tides  twenty-one, 
Since  first  your  hand  as  a  friend's  was  mine. 
In  a  season  whose  days  are  yet  honey  and  wine 
To  the  pale  close  Hps  of  Remembrance,  shed 
By  the  cupbearer  Love  for  desire  of  the  dead. 

A  great  portion  of  this  volume  of  1878  was 
ready  for  the  Press  at  least  two  years  earlier. 


THE   MIDDLE   YEARS  243 

On  the  10th  of  September,  1876,  when  he  spent 
a  long  day  at  my  house,  he  read  nearly  half  of 
what  now  forms  that  collection  to  my  wife  and 
myself. 

On  one  of  the  last  occasions  when  he  went  into 
general  society,  he  met  "in  a  crush"  at  Lord 
Houghton's  a  young  Oxford  man  who  asked  his 
host  to  present  him  to  Swinburne.  This  was 
Oscar  Wilde,  of  whom  Swinburne  four  years  later 
(April  4,  1882)  gave  the  following  description  to 
an  American  friend : 

I  thought  he  seemed  a  harmless  young  nobody,  and 
had  no  notion  that  he  was  the  sort  of  man  to  play  the 
mountebank  as  he  seems  to  have  been  doing.  A  letter 
which  he  wrote  to  me  lately  about  Walt  Whitman  was 
quite  a  modest,  gentleman-like,  reasonable  affair  without 
any  flourish  or  affectation  of  any  kind  in  matter  or 
expression.  It  is  really  very  odd.  I  should  think  you 
in  America  must  be  as  tired  of  his  name  as  we  are  in  London 
of  Mr.  Barnum's  and  his  Jumbo's. 

Of  Swinburne's  life  at  the  time  little  can  be 
recorded,  and  less  that  is  agreeable.  In  January 
1878  he  spent  a  boisterous  month  with  John 
Nichol  in  Glasgow,  where  he  published  some 
political  sonnets  in  a  college  magazine.  Mr. 
Donald  Crawford,  who  had  not  seen  Swinburne 
since  they  were  undergraduates  together  at 
Balliol,  met  him  in  Glasgow,  and  was  pained  at 
his  physical  condition;  "the  pleasant  voice 
remained,  but  all  the  traits  of  fairyland  were 
gone."  The  most  gifted  of  Nichol's  pupils,  the 
unfortunate  John  Davidson,  who  was  now  an 
usher  at  Alexander's  Charity,  Glasgow,  sent 
Swinburne     some     of     his     unpublished     verses. 


244    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Swinburne  received  him  in  Nichol's  house  with 
great  affabihty,  laying  his  hand  upon  Davidson's 
head  in  a  sort  of  benediction,  and  addressing 
him  as  "Poet."  My  friend  Mr.  Alexander 
Hedderwick  remembers  Swinburne  at  this  time 
"marching  about  the  Quadrangle,  very  fashion- 
ably dressed,  in  a  close-fitting  long  Melton  coat 
of  dark  blue,  and  the  neatest  of  little  shoes,  his 
top  hat  balanced  on  his  great  mop  of  hair,  a 
marvel  to  our  rough  Glasgow  students."  From 
February  1877  to  June  1879  he  was  in  a  state  of 
constant  febrility  and  ill-health  in  London,  and 
permanently,  if  I  remember  right,  in  his  rooms 
in  Great  James  Street.  He  positively  refused  to 
go  dow^n  to  Holmwood  at  the  summons  of  his 
mother,  who  wrote,  in  July  1878,  that  she  had 
not  seen  him  since  April  of  the  preceding  year. 

Lord  Houghton  found  him  in  a  sad  condition, 
but  not  all  the  entreaties  of  his  family  would' 
induce  him  to  stir,  or  to  permit  them  to  visit 
him,  until  June  1879,  when  he  was  persuaded 
to  spend  a  month  at  Holmwood.  The  succeed- 
ing months  of  August  and  September  were  the 
most  deplorable  in  his  whole  career.  When  he 
seemed  actually  at  the  doors  of  death,  Theodore 
Watts,  with  the  approval  of  the  distressed  and 
bewildered  Lady  Jane  Swinburne,  arrived  very 
early  one  morning  and  carried  the  poet  by  force 
to  his  own  rooms,  which  were  now  close  by. 
Thence,  as  soon  as  he  was  partially  recovered,  to 
Putney,  where  in  an  amazingly  short  space  of 
time  Swinburne  regained  his  health  so  that  he 
was  soon  once  more  writing  with  unabated 
vigour. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PUTNEY 
(1879-1909) 

In  September  1879  Swinburne  was  removed,  as 
has  been  said,  in  a  state  of  health  which  seemed i 
almost  desperate,  from  Watts'  rooms  in  Great 
James  Street,  to  the  upper  storey  of  a  semi- 
detached villa  at  Putney,  which  Theodore  Watts 
now  took  for  the  purpose.^  He  was  at  first  too 
ill  to  see  any  one  or  to  write  a  letter,  yet,  such 
was  his  recuperative  vitality,  that  by  the  middle 
of  October  he  was  once  more  able  to  resume 
his  correspondence  and  his  literary  work,  and 
to  enjoy  regular  exercise  out-of-doors.  He  wrote 
to  Lord  Houghton : 

I  keep  no  chambers  in  town  henceforth,  or  (probably) 
for  ever  —  finding  after  but  too  many  years'  trial  that  in 
the  atmosphere  of  London  I  can  never  expect  more  than 
a  fortnight  at  best  of  my  usual  health  and  strength. 
Here  I  am,  like  Mr.  Tennyson  at  Farringford,  "  close 
to  the  edge  of  a  noble  down,"  and  I  might  add  "Far 
out  of  sight,  sound,  smell  of  the  town,"  and  yet  within 
an  easy  hour's  run  of  Hyde  Park  Corner  and  a  pleasant 
drive  of  Chelsea,  where  I  have  some  friends  lingering. 

*  The  lease  was  granted  for  twenty-one  years,  from  the  18th  of  Sep- 
tember 1879,  to  Walter  Theodore  Watts,  "of  Ivy  Lodge,  Werter  Road, 
Putney,"  that  being  the  residence  of  Watts'  sister,  Mrs.  Mason. 

245 


246     ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

His  prophecy  was  fulfilled ;  The  Pines,  Putney 
Hill,  continued  to  be  his  address  for  the  remainder 
of  his  life,  that  is  for  nearly  thirty  years.  During 
this  long  period,  Swinburne  led  an  existence  of 
the  greatest  calm,  passivity,  and  resignation, 
without  a  struggle  and  apparently  without  a  wish 
for  liberty  of  action.  He  abandoned  all  attempt 
at  initiative,  in  return  for  benefits  of  watchful 
care,  assiduous  protection,  and  a  relief  from  every 
species  of  responsibility.  His  life  was  "sheltered" 
like  that  of  a  child,  and  he  was  able  to  concentrate 
his  faculties  upon  literature  and  his  dreams 
without  a  shadow  of  disturbance.  "A  child  at 
play  with  his  toys,"  an  acute  and  indulgent 
observer  of  those  days  called  him,  "a  child  turn- 
ing for  comfort,  self-forgetfulness,  and  consolation 
to  poetry,  itself,  in  a  sense,  a  toy." 

Watts  undertook  to  relieve  him  of  all  business 
worries.  Swinburne  was  not  a  lodger  at  The  Pines, 
but  joint-householder  with  Watts,  and  in  theory 
all  expenses  were  to  be  equally  divided.  The  poet 
wrote  to  John  Nichol :  "My  own  little  money 
matters  have  been  getting  into  such  an  accursed 
tangle  that  unless  Watts  had  once  more  taken 
them  in  hand  I  should  ere  now"  (the  winter  of 
1879)  "have  found  my  assets  reduced  to  what 
the  old  Enemy  calls  'Zero,  or  even  a  frightful 
minus  quantity.'"  Swinburne  was  easily  an- 
noyed by  business  letters,  the  receipt  of  which 
made  him  quiver  with  irritation.  For  the  re- 
mainder of  his  life  he  handed  such  unpleasant 
objects  to  his  friend,  without  glancing  at  them. 
An  exception  must  be  noted  in  his  correspondence 
about   the   publication   of   his    books,    which   he 


PUTNEY  247 

always  insisted  on  conducting  with  Mr.  Andrew 
Chatto  himself. 

His  days  were  divided  with  an  almost  mechan- 
ical precision.  Swinburne  was  never  an  early 
riser,  but  towards  the  middle  of  every  morning, 
no  matter  what  the  weather,  he  went  out  for 
a  long  walk,  generally  in  the  one  direction  up 
Putney  Hill  and  over  the  Heath,  but  sometimes 
along  the  Richmond  Road  to  the  Mortlake  Arms 
and  then  through  Barnes  Common  as  far  as 
Barnes  Green  and  the  Church.  For  many  years 
he  was  a  constant  visitor  at  the  shop  of  the 
Misses  Frost,  at  the  corner  of  Ridgeway  and 
High  Street,  going  into  Wimbledon ;  from  these 
ladies  he  regularly  bought  his  newspapers  and 
ordered  his  books,  and  their  house  was  the  bourne 
of  his  walk  in  a  southerly  direction.  Very  seldom 
he  crossed  the  river  northwards  into  London. 

In  storm  and  rain,  always  without  an  umbrella, 
the  little  erect  figure,  with  damp  red  curls  emerging 
from  under  a  soft  felt  hat,  might  be  seen  walking, 
walking,  "pelting  along  all  the  time  as  fast  as  I 
can  go,"  so  that  he  became  a  portent  and  a 
legend  throughout  the  confines  of  Wandsworth 
and  Wimbledon.  He  always  returned  home  a 
little  while  before  the  mid-day  luncheon,  or 
dinner;  and  at  2.30,  with  clock-work  regularity, 
he  "disappeared  to  enjoy  a  siesta,"  which 
sometimes  lasted  until  4.30.  Then  he  would 
work  for  a  while,  and  Watts-Dun  ton  reported 
to  Mr.  Wise  that  in  the  afternoon  he  often  sat 
in  his  study  on  the  ground  floor,  and  "heard 
Swinburne  in  his  own  room  overhead  walking 
round    and    round    the    floor    for    ten    minutes 


248  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

at  a  time,  composing,  and  then  silence  would 
fall  for  five  minutes  while  Swinburne  was 
writing  down  the  new  stanza  or  sentence, 
and  then  the  promenade  would  begin  again  as 
before."  The  rest  of  the  day  was  mostly  spent 
among  his  books,  which  were  not  only  numerous, 
but  included  many  that  were  choice  and  rare. 

In  the  evening  his  regular  habit  was  to  read 
aloud.  It  is  perhaps  worth  mentioning  that 
Swinburne  was  an  insatiable  and  continuous 
novel-reader.  He  was  so  fond  of  Dickens  that 
he  read  through  the  whole  of  his  novels  every  three 
years,  and  Watts-Dunton  used  to  declare  that 
Swinburne  had  read  them  aloud  to  him  "at 
least  three  times."  This  was  his  favourite 
reading,  but  he  could,  and  did,  read  anything  in 
the  shape  of  a  novel  which  the  circulating  library 
supplied.  His  casual  remarks  about  novels  were 
often  piquant,  and  familiar.  I  remember  that 
he  dismissed  Guy  Deverell  as  "too  hasty,  too 
blurred  and  blottesque,"  and  said  of  Uncle  Silas 
that  the  hero  "would  be  more  ghastly  if  he  were 
less  ghostly."  He  took  a  vivid  interest  in  the 
novels  of  his  young  kinsman,  Mr.  Richard  Bagot, 
and  particularly  in  the  earliest,  A  Roman  Mystery, 
where  the  study  of  lycanthropy  attracted  him. 

He  explained  to  me  once  that  he  did  not  regard 
current  novels  as  literature  but  as  life,  and  that 
in  his  absolutely  detached  existence  they  took 
the  place  of  real  adventures.  In  these  conditions 
his  health  became  perfect ;  he  developed  into  a 
sturdy  little  old  man,  without  an  ache  or  a  pain ; 
and  he  who  had  suffered  so  long  in  London  from 
absence   of   appetite   and   wasting   insomnia,   for 


PUTNEY  249 

the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life  at  Putney  ate  like 
a  caterpillar  and  slept  like  a  dormouse. 

Since  many  months  the  first  act  of  the  third 
play  of  the  Queen  Mary  trilogy  had  been  written, 
and  even  set  up  in  type.  But  there  was  no  more 
of  it  in  existence  when  the  poet  retired  to  Putney. 
As  soon  as  he  felt  his  strength  return,  he  took  up 
again  this  MS.  and  wrote  some  of  the  Walsingham 
scenes,  but  he  was  not  attuned  to  the  subject,  and 
laid  it  down  again.  Mary  Stuart  progressed  by 
fits  and  starts,  and  was  not  completed  until  1881. 
At  Christmas  1879  Swinburne  was  feverishly 
engaged  in  completing  his  long-promised  prose 
book,  A  Study  of  Shakespeare,  which  appeared 
early  in  the  following  year.  His  articles  in  the 
Fortnightly  Review  had  in  1875  procured 
Swinburne  the  friendship  of  Halliwell-Phillipps, 
who  supplied  him  with  documents  and  volumes 
which  considerably  modified,  and  perhaps  dis- 
turbed, the  views  he  had  hitherto  expressed 
regarding  the  imaginative  development  of  Shake- 
speare's mind.  But  Halliwell-Phillipps  warmly 
supported  Swinburne's  general  criticism,  and 
he  was  the  most  prominent  and  outspoken  of  the 
few  Shakespearean  experts  who  now  took  Swin- 
burne's side  in  the  great  battle  with  Furnivall. 

We  have  already  noted  that  relations  between 
the  poet  and  the  official  representative  of  Shake- 
spearean criticism  were  strained  as  early  as  the 
end  of  1875.  But  the  breach  between  Furnivall 
and  Swinburne  was  not  final  until  January  1880, 
when  the  storm  at  last  broke  out  in  full  fury. 
Furnivall  now  lost  all  self-command,  and  wrote 
of    "Mr.     Swinburne's    shallow    ignorance    and 


250  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

infinite  self-conceit."  He  told  him  "to  teach  his 
grandmother  to  suck  eggs";  he  told  him  that 
his  ear  was  "a  poetaster's,  hairy,  thick  and  dull." 
Presently  Furnivall  took  to  parodying  Swinburne's 
name,  with  dismal  vulgarity,  as  "Pigsbrook"  (to 
which  injury  the  poet  archly  retorted  by  dubbing 
Furnivall  "Brothelsdyke") ;  and  he  assailed  the 
poet's  private  friends  with  insolent  post-cards 
to  the  poet's  disadvantage.  He  brought  down 
upon  himself  the  reproof  of  Halliwell-Phillipps, 
and  of  another  of  the  most  eminent  of  his  own 
supporters,  Aldis  Wright,  who  told  Furnivall 
that  he  was  behaving  "like  an  angry  monkey." 
A  large  number  of  the  influential  members  of 
the  New  Shakspere  Society  expostulated  with 
Furnivall  in  a  signed  protest.  He  struck  all 
the  names  of  these  signatories  out  of  the  list 
of  members,  and  sent  them  a  printed  letter 
(April  25,  1881),  telling  them  —  they  included 
the  seventh  Duke  of  Devonshire,  Jebb,  and 
Creighton  —  "I  am  glad  to  be  rid  of  you."  His 
behaviour,  in  short,  was  that  of  a  man  demented, 
though  we  may  conjecture  that  he  was  not  quite 
so  angry  as  it  amused  him  to  pretend  to  be. 

Swinburne,  however,  was  scarcely  less  to 
blame,  except  that  he  spoke  only  for  himself, 
and  had  no  duty  to  a  body  of  subscribers.  But 
it  is  obvious  that,  when  Furnivall  began  to  be 
rude,  Swinburne  should  have  withdrawn  severely 
from  the  controversy.  Instead  of  doing  that, 
he  exercised  his  ingenuity  in  infuriating  his 
antagonist.  He  had  a  diabolical  cleverness  in  tor- 
menting Furnivall,  and  he  knew  how  to  hint  the 
exact  charge  which  would  excite  that  unfortunate 


PUTNEY  251 

man  to  frenzy.  Swinburne  would  ask  his  friends, 
as  I  well  remember,  whether  such  "a  flagellant 
note,"  which  he  would  read  in  MS.  to  us,  splutter- 
ing with  ecstasy  as  he  did  so  —  would  not  make 
"Dunce  Furnivall  dance  till  the  sweat  pours 
down  his  cheeks"?  He  used  to  say  that  at 
each  fresh  sample  of  unprovoked  impertinence  all 
the  French  and  Irish  particles  of  his  blood 
tingled  with  an  instinct  answering  to  that  of 
Bussy  d'Amboise  or  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger. 

He  took  nothing  seriously  until  Browning 
accepted  the  presidency  of  the  New  Shakspere 
Society.  That  did  shake  Swinburne's  complacency, 
and  he  wrote  calling  upon  me  to  sympathise  with 
him  in  his  rage  at  "Browning's  having  disgraced 
himself  for  life  by  his  acceptance  of  the  presi- 
dency of  a  blackguard's  gang  of  blockheads." 
More  slinging  of  mud  went  on,  until  everybody 
began  to  be  sick  of  the  subject,  and  newspaper 
editors  declined  to  insert  any  more  letters  on 
either  side.  Furnivall  kept  up  for  some  time, 
by  halfpenny  post,  a  running  fire  of  scurrilities, 
and  then  the  grotesque  warfare  came  to  a  sullen 
end.  But,  to  the  close  of  his  life,  to  speak  to 
Swinburne  of  "pause-tests"  and  "rhyme-tests" 
was  like  calling  out  "Rats!"  to  a  terrier.^ 

Swinburne  now  occupied  himself  in  preparing 
for  the  press  a  volume  which  appeared  anony- 
mously towards  the  beginning  of  1880,  and  con- 
siderably mystified  the  reading  world.  This  was 
The    Heptalogia;     or,    the    Seven    against    Sense^ 

^  Swinburne's  occasional  contributions  to  this  controversy  were  first 
collected  in  1912,  by  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise  in  his  privately  printed  "Letters  to 
the  Press,  by  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne." 


252  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

including  parodies  of  Tennyson,  Robert  and 
Elizabeth  Browning,  Coventry  Patmore,  Robert 
Lord  Lytton,  Rossetti  and  Swinburne  himself. 
On  this  delightful  fool's  cap  few  of  the  bells  were 
recent.  The  imitation  of  Patmore  had  been  made 
as  early  as  1859,  and  those  of  the  Brownings  in 
1863-64,  for  the  amusement  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
circle  of  that  day ;  the  Tennyson  was  written 
in  1877.  The  Rossetti  sonnet  is  probably  much 
earlier.  It  was  at  Theodore  Watts'  suggestion 
that  Swinburne  now  added  "Nephelidia,"  which 
is  a  parody  of  his  own  most  alliterative  and 
redundant  poetry,  so  that  by  a  laugh  against 
himself  he  might  make  pleasantly  innocuous  the 
satire  on  the  others.  There  exists  in  MS.  another 
fragmentary  parody  by  Swinburne  of  himself,  in 
the  measure  of  "Dolores." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  caricatures  are  quite 
inoffensive,  except  the  "Last  Words  of  a  Seventh- 
Rate  Poet,"  in  which  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the 
second  Lord  Lytton  are  virulently  dealt  with.  The 
writer  whose  pen-name  was  "Owen  Meredith"  was 
at  that  time  Viceroy  of  India,  but  he  shortly  after- 
wards returned,  and  Lord  Houghton  entertained 
him  at  a  small  luncheon,  to  which  Swinburne  and 
Watts  were  bidden.  Lord  Houghton's  intention, 
no  doubt,  was  to  bring  about  a  reconciliation, 
but  the  quarrel  being  a  purely  abstract  one  and 
Swinburne  extremely  deaf,  it  was  not  until  he 
left  Houghton's  house  that  he  learned  that  he  had 
been  in  a  room  with  his  pet  aversion. 

The  Heptalogia,  the  dates  of  composition  of 
which  have  never  before,  I  believe,  been  stated, 
deserves  particular  attention,  because  it  is,  in  the 


PUTNEY  253 

main,  a  work  of  Swinburne's  prime.  We  have 
seen  that  the  parodies  on  the  two  Brownings, 
and  especially  "The  Poet  and  the  Woodlouse," 
belong  to  the  period  of  his  highest  intellectual 
vigour.  He  told  R.  W.  Raper,  with  exultant 
humour,  that  he  (Algernon)  could  parody  Robert 
Browning's  discords  with  impunity,  since  Brown- 
ing could  never  revenge  himself  by  parodying 
his  harmonies.  The  imitation  of  Mrs.  Browning 
is  perhaps  the  very  best  parody  in  existence, 
because  it  does  not  merely  reproduce  the  material 
form  and  the  verbiage  of  a  mannered  writer,  but 
it  enters  into  her  very  brain.  Thus,  and  not 
otherwise,  would  Mrs.  Browning  have  expressed 
herself  if  she  had  been  the  victim  of  a  sunstroke 
or  intoxicated  with  ether  : 

I  am  fed  with  intimations,  I  am  clothed  with  consequences, 
And  the  air  I  breathe  is  coloured  with  apocalyptic  blush ; 

Ripest-budded  odours  blossom  out  of  dim  chaotic  stenches. 
And  the  Soul  plants  spirit-lilies  in  sick  leagues  of  human 

slush, 

shouts  the  Woodlouse,  and  if  the  hand  is  the 
hand  of  Algernon,  the  voice  is  unquestionably  the 
authentic  voice  of  Elizabeth. 

In  the  course  of  January  1880  Swinburne 
published  a  volume  of  lyrical  verse  entitled  Songs 
of  the  Springtides.  This  consisted  of  three  long 
odes,  and  a  supplementary  celebration  of  Victor 
Hugo's  seventy -eighth  birthday.  "Thalassius" 
is  the  vaguely  autobiographical  story  of  a  poet, 
whose  father  is  the  sun  and  his  mother  the  sea, 
and  who  has  been  found,  as  a  laughing  babe,  on 
a   reach   of   shingle   upon   some   unnamed   coast. 


254  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

"On  the  Cliffs"  is  a  eulogy  of  the  genius  of 
Sappho,  expressed  in  terms  of  hyperbole;  trans- 
lations of  the  best-remembered  fragments  of  the 
Lesbian  are  introduced  in  mosaic.  "The  Garden 
of  Cymodoce,"  which  has  already  been  mentioned, 
is  a  glorification  of  the  beauties  of  the  island  of 
Sark.  The  finest  page  in  "Thalassius,"  perhaps 
in  the  volume,  is  that  describing  the  bull-voiced 
mimes  bellowing  below  the  throne  of  Nero.  The 
two  first  odes  are  irregular,  but  in  "The  Garden 
of  Cymodoce"  a  number  of  stanzaic  forms  are 
used,  and  there  is  a  chorus  about  the  sea-anemones 
of  Sark,  where 

No  foot  but  the  sea-mew's  there  settles 

On  the  spikes  of  thine  anthers  like  horns. 
With  snow-coloured  spray  for  thy  petals. 
Black  rocks  for  thy  thorns. 

Unfortunately,  clever  as  this  is,  it  reads  like  a 
parody  out  of  The  Heptalogia.  The  "Birthday 
Ode  for  Victor  Hugo"  is  a  sort  of  critical  puzzle, 
explained  by  a  dated  key  at  the  end.  The 
author,  as  if  for  a  wager,  contrives  to  allude  in 
succession  to  every  one  of  Victor  Hugo's  writings, 
without  naming  any.  It  might  be  recommended 
as  a  fireside  game  in  a  cultured  family  to  read 
Swinburne's  descriptions  and  guess  what  work 
of  Hugo's  each  refers  to.  For  instance,  on  hearing 
the  words, 

As  keen  the  blast  of  love-enkindled  fate 
That  burst  the  Paduan  tyrant's  guarded  gate, 

a  bright  child  would  shout  Angelo ! 

Throughout    this    year    1880    Swinburne    was 
writing   indomitably,   both   in   prose   and   verse. 


PUTNEY  ^55 

The  poems  contained  in  the  volume  called 
Studies  in  Song  were  all  composed  between 
February  and  August.  Watts  was  responsible 
for  the  effort  Swinburne  was  now  making  to 
write  descriptive  or  landscape  poetry ;  he  urged 
the  poet  to  devote  himself  during  their  summer 
holidays  more  to  positive  observation  and  less 
to  abstract  passion.  Of  "By  the  North  Sea," 
which  was  finished  in  July  1880,  Swinburne  wrote, 
"Watts  likes  it  better  than  anything  I  ever  did, 
and  in  metrical  and  antiphonal  effect  I  prefer 
it  myself  to  all  my  others  " ;  yet  this  poem  is  but 
an  imitation  of  the  "Epilogue"  of  1866.  The 
composition  of  enormous  critical  odes,  that  section 
of  all  his  writings  which  is  probably  the  least 
read,  had  now  become  a  habit  with  Swinburne. 
All  this  year  he  was  plunged  once  more  in  the 
study  of  Landor,  and  perhaps  to  excess,  for  the 
Song  for  the  Centenary  of  Landor  is  one  of  the 
most  tiresome  of  all  his  works.  It  is  only  right, 
however,  to  display  his  own  attitude  to  it.  He 
wrote  to  me  (July  5,  1880)  of  this  poem : 

Come  soon  and  hear  it.  .  .  .  It  sums  up  what  I  have 
to  say  of  my  great  old  friend  on  all  accounts  whether 
critical  or  personal  —  and  I  know  how  much  he  would 
have  preferred  to  have  it  said  in  verse,  the  best  that  I 
could  command  which  I  have  certainly  done  all  I  can 
to  give  him,  and  to  make  as  worthy  of  him  as  may  be  — 
wishing  earnestly  that  it  were  nearer  that  inaccessible 
mark  of  worthiness.  But  the  limit  of  eight  hundred  lines 
is  pitifully  narrow  for  such  a  Titanic  charge  as  the 
panegyric  of  such  a  Titan. 

These  are  generous  words,  and  yet  even  in  the 
looseness    of    their    arrangement    they    betray    a 


256  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

growing  and  a  fatal  weakness.  The  sense  of 
'proportion  had  always  been  capricious  in  Swin- 
burne's constitution ;  it  was  now  leaving  him 
altogether,  and  the  power  of  logical  expression 
was  accompanying  it.  In  his  determination 
to  do  honour  to  Landor,  he  omitted  to  ask 
himself  whether  an  extremely  allusive  and  obscure 
piece  of  versified  rhetoric  in  800  lines  was  a 
practical  means  of  concentrating  attention  on 
the  object,  and  he  poured  forth  stanzas  in  which 
great  lines  were  frequent  and  luminous  passages 
occasional,  but  the  total  effect  of  which  was 
^ merely  foggy  and  fatiguing. 

The  faults  into  which  he  had  slipped  were  not 
unobserved  by  the  reviewers  and  the  public. 
Songs  of  the  Springtides  met  with  a  lukewarm, 
and  Studies  in  Song  with  a  very  cold,  reception. 
The  poet  was  greatly  disappointed,  and  in  a 
letter  to  a  friend  he  wrote  that  he  had  become, 
like  Imogen,  a  castaway:  *'Poor  I  am  stale,  a 
garment  out  of  fashion";  but  he  failed  to  ap- 
preciate the  cause  of  the  decline  in  his^,  popularity. 

The  very  quiet  year  1881  slipped  by  at  Putney 
almost  without  an  incident.  For  some  time  past 
Swinburne  had  been  afflicted  by  a  growing  deaf- 
ness, a  malady  to  which,  I  understand,  the 
members  of  his  famih^  are  liable.  After  the  crisis 
in  his  health,  this  hardness  of  hearing  became 
more  serious,  and  it  gradually  closed  general 
society  to  him.  His  principal  business  in  1881 
was  the  continuation  of  Mary  Stuart,  in  which 
he  completed  the  trilogy  of  which  Chastelard 
and  Bothwell  had  been  parts.  This  drama  was 
published  before  Christmas,  and  Swinburne  also 


PUTNEY  257 

contributed  to  the  Fortnightly  Review  a  prose 
Note  on  the  Character  of  Queen  Mary.  The 
play  has  the  negative  merit  of  brevity,  in  com- 
parison at  least  with  Bothwell,  but  it  is  much 
less  interesting.  Possibly  the  poet  now  knew  too 
much  of  his  subject  and  was  hampered  at  every 
turn  by  too  accurate  information.  Swinburne 
was  disappointed  at  the  coldness  of  the  critics 
and  at  the  indifference  of  the  public.  Two 
things,  however,  consoled  him,  a  letter  from  the 
venerable  author  of  Philip  van  Artevelde,  "the 
one  English  poet  living  for  whose  opinion  as  an 
authority  on  poetic  drama  I  care  a  cracked 
farthing"  —  and  an  invitation  from  the  editor 
of  the  new  edition  of  the  Encyclopoedia  Britannica 
to  write  the  article  on  Mary  Queen  of  Scots. 
But  for  us  the  best  outcome  of  all  was  the  set  of 
seven  "Adieux  a  Marie  Stuart,"  in  which  Swin- 
burne regained  for  a  moment  all  his  pristine 
freshness  and  charm.  These  lyrics,  indeed,  have 
the  melancholy  interest  of  being  perhaps  the 
very  latest  in  which  he  revealed  a  new  aspect  of 
his  poetical  genius. 

The  Historiographer-Royal  for  Scotland,  Pro- 
fessor P.  Hume  Brown,  has  been  so  kind  as 
to  oblige  me  with  the  following  estimate  of 
Swinburne's  contributions  to  the  study  of  Queen 
Mary: 

It  was  the  opinion  of  Goethe  that  "for  the  poet  no 
characters  are  historical,"  and  he  exemplified  it  in 
transforming  the  Egmont  of  history,  a  man  of  mature 
years  and  the  father  of  eleven  children,  into  an  irre- 
sponsible youth  unfettered  by  family  ties.  If  we  may 
judge    from    Swinburne's    three    dramas    devoted    to    the 


258    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

fortunes  of  Mary  Stuart,  he  held  stricter  views  than 
Goethe  regarding  the  poet's  licence  in  dealing  with 
historical  events  and  historical  characters.  Nowhere  in 
these  plays  does  he  seriously  deviate  from  the  facts  of 
history  as  they  are  known  to  us.  He  puts  his  own 
construction  on  the  motives  and  aims  of  the  historical 
personages  who  appear  on  his  stage,  and  on  the  causal 
connection  of  the  events  in  which  they  are  concerned, 
but  his  construction  is  based  on  satisfactory  evidence. 
The  plays  in  themselves  and  the  article  on  Mary  con- 
tributed by  Swinburne  to  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica, 
indeed,  leave  us  in  no  doubt  that  he  had  not  only  care- 
fully studied  the  facts  immediately  bearing  on  the  fate 
of  Mary,  but  by  wide  reading  in  the  contemporary 
literature  had  steeped  himself  in  the  atmosphere  of  the 
period  in  which  his  characters  lived  and  moved.  In  his 
selection  of  events,  their  sequence,  and  connection  he 
appears  to  have  generally  followed  Froude.  This  is 
notably  the  case  in  the  last  of  the  three  dramas ;  in  all 
the  five  acts  that  compose  it  the  speeches  of  the  different 
characters  are  for  the  most  part  based  on  the  text  of 
Froude.  In  the  main,  also,  Swinburne's  conception  of 
Mary's  character  is  the  same  as  Fronde's  —  though  with  a 
difference.  For  both,  craft  and  passion  are  the  dominat- 
ing traits  of  her  nature,  and  both  equally  recognise  the 
qualities  wherein  lay  her  personal  charm.  But  while 
Fronde's  narrative  makes  prominent  the  bad  that  he 
saw  in  her,  Swinburne  presents  her  character  as  a  whole, 
and  exhibits  her  good  and  evil  qualities  in  equal  relief. 
Yet  it  is  evident  that  there  was  one  action  of  Mary 
which,  perhaps  characteristically,  Swinburne  could  not 
forgive  —  her  consenting  to  the  execution  of  Chastelard. 
The  tragic  suggestion  in  all  the  three  dramas,  indeed, 
is  that  Mary's  misfortunes,  ending  in  her  doom  at 
Fotheringay,  are  the  nemesis  consequent  on  that  action, 
and  it  is  the  part  of  Mary  Beaton,  between  whom  and 
Chastelard's  love  Mary  had  fatally  intervened,  to  keep 
the  fact  before  the  mind  of  the  reader.     The  last  words 


PUTNEY  259 

of  the  trilogy,  uttered  by  Mary  Beaton,  link  the  fate  of 
Chastelard  with  that  of  her  who  betrayed  him : 

I  heard  that  very  cry  go  up 
Far  off  long  since  to  God,  who  answers  here. 

Swinburne  was  now  approaching  a  critical 
point  in  his  career.  The  reception  of  his  three 
latest  volumes  of  verse  by  the  reviewers  and  by 
the  public  had  shown  that  through  repetition  of 
effect,  or  through  a  flagging  of  his  natural  vivacity, 
he  had  lost  to  a  serious  degree  that  power  of 
exciting  curiosity  and  stimulating  discussion  which 
had  so  pre-eminently  attended  his  publications 
fifteen  years  earlier.  Every  poet  of  a  large  ambi- 
tion desires  to  produce  one  poem  on  a  scale  which 
shall  demand  permanent  and  universal  attention. 
Browning  had  achieved  a  great  success  with 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  and  it  was  at  that  time, 
about  1868,  that  Swinburne  resolved  to  ensphere 
all  that  was  most  glowing  in  his  own  imagination 
in  one  rounded  epic  poem.  From  a  very  early 
date  the  story  of  Tristan  de  Leonois  (or  Tristram 
of  Lyonesse),  son  of  the  sister  of  Mark,  King  of 
Cornwall,  had  attracted  him ;  it  was  the  subject 
of  his  earliest  published  verses,  contributed  to 
an  Oxford  magazine  in  1858 ;  still  further  back, 
according  to  his  later  report,  that  romantic  lover 
had  been  his  "close  and  common  friend"  at 
Eton.  There  is  evidence  to  show  that  from 
school-time  onwards  Swinburne  never  ceased  to 
propose  to  himself  the  writing  of  an  epic  on  the 
story  of  Tristram. 

There  were  many  reasons  for  his  deliberate 
adoption   of   the   legend   woven   in   the   eleventh 


/ 


260  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

century  around  the  notion  of  how  Iseult  and 
Tristram  drank  the  magic  potion  intended  for 
Iseult  and  her  husband.  This  romance,  of  which 
there  survive  many  mediaeval  versions,  was 
created  by  the  Celtic  spirit,  accompanied  on  "la 
harpe  Bretonne."  It  possesses  a  charm  of 
mystery  and  passion  which  lifts  it  far  above  all 
other  purely  mediaeval  legends.  It  was  preserved 
and  arranged  by  Frenchmen  —  it  is  the  Anglo- 
Norman  version  of  Thomas  of  Brittany,  which 
represents  it  best,  —  but  in  the  intense  quality  of 
its  melancholy  emotion  it  is  essentially  Celtic. 
Here  was  a  story  of  love  and  adventure,  celebrated 
over  the  whole  world  of  Europe,  at  the  centre  of 
it  an  associate  of  our  great  national  heroes  of  the 
Round  Table,  the  scene  of  it  laid  in  British  waters, 
a  story  told  centuries  ago  in  an  English  version 
which  is  lost.  Matthew  Arnold  had  touched  it, 
but  it  still  awaited  an  annexing  poet. 

Love  in  its  romantic  aspect  had  a  perennial 
attraction  for  Swinburne,  and  the  tale  of  Tristram 
and  Iseult  was  romantic  to  extravagance.  In  all 
the  other  great  stories  of  the  world  love  had  been  an 
appanage  or  an  ornament ;  in  this,  for  the  first 
time,  and  in  the  quivering  Celtic  abandonment,  it 
was  the  essence  of  the  event.  Moreover,  that 
ecstatic  devotion  to  and  observation  of  the  various 
moods  of  the  sea  which  so  remarkably  distinguished 
Swinburne  above  all  other  poets  found  its  full 
scope  in  the  story  of  the  sailing  of  the  Swallow 
across  the  perilous  Cornish  waters.  Gaston  Paris 
has  exclaimed  in  examining  the  Tristram  saga, 
*' quelle  part  elle  prend  a  Taction,  cette  mer 
immense  et  incertaine!"     In  the  days  of  Swin- 


PUTNEY  261 

burne's  youth,  when  he  associated  closely  with 
Rossetti,  Morris,  and  Burne-Jones,  the  legend  of 
Tristram  and  Iseult  was  often  discussed,  and  it 
was  tacitly  admitted  to  be  predestined  to  extended 
treatment  by  Swinburne. 

After  long  meditation,  he  began  his  epic  in 
1871,  as  soon  as  Songs  before  Sunrise  was  off  his 
hands,  and  he  wrote  the  Prelude,  in  258  lines,  in 
a  tumult  of  improvisation.  This  he  immediately 
published  in  a  holiday-book  called  Pleasure. 
Then  the  breeze  of  inspiration  fell,  and  for  a  long 
time  he  wrote  no  more,  absorbed  in  Bothwell  and 
in  other  things.  But  he  never  abandoned  his 
intention,  and  during  the  eleven  years  which 
followed,  he  was  every  now  and  then  composing 
what  he  called  "parcels  of  Tristram.'''  But  it 
was  not  until  1881  that  he  took  it  vigorously  in 
hand,  and  in  the  following  April  he  finished  it. 
It  was  published  in  July  1882,  in  an  unfortunate 
form.  The  one  epic  of  a  great  poet  should,  of 
course,  have  made  its  undistracted  appeal  to 
the  public  in  a  single,  handsome  volume,  but 
there  was  great  alarm  in  Putney  as  to  the  recep- 
tion of  a  poem  so  amatory  in  tone.  Watts, 
though  he  regarded  Tristram  as  Swinburne's 
highest  poetical  effort,  feared  a  repetition  of  the 
scandal  of  1866,  and  fancied  that  the  second  and 
fourth  cantos  might  be  challenged  by  the  Public 
Prosecutor.  To  modify  the  dreaded  effect  of 
these  passages,  a  very  thick  book  was  produced, 
in  which  Tristram  was  eked  out  and  half  con- 
cealed by  nearly  200  pages  of  miscellaneous 
lyrics.  Swinburne,  w4io  submitted  to  everything 
that  Watts  suggested,  acquiesced  in  this  arrange- 


262    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

ment,  but  took  a  humorous  view  of  it.  He 
told  Lord  Houghton  (June  6,  1882)  that  he 
should  "expect  the  Mothers  of  England  to  rally 
round  a  book  containing  forty -five  'songs  of 
innocence'  —  lyrics  on  infancy  and  childhood." 
But  there  proved  to  be  no  cause  for  anxiety. 
The  amatory  complexion  of  Tristram  was  not 
objected  to  by  anybody.  What  was  objected 
to  in  the  poem,  alas !  was  its  lack  of  vital 
interest. 

It  requires  some  care  to  define  the  cause  of  the 
comparative  failure  of  Tristram  of  Lyonesse,  the 
work  on  which  Swinburne  had  been  engaged  from 
his  thirty -fourth  to  his  forty-sixth  year,  and  which 
he  had  intended  to  be  the  very  top-stone  of  his 
poetical  monument.  The  subject  seemed  to  suit 
him.  He  had  always  studied  with  interest  the 
tragic  symptoms  of  a  culpable  love,  the  passion 
of  guilty  lovers  lifted  by  their  ecstasy  into  a 
condition  where  their  moral  sense  was  paralysed, 
and  where  greatness  could  only  be  achieved  by 
their  apprehensions,  sufferings  and  long-drawn 
deaths.  He  had  entered  with  high  intelligence 
into  the  intensely  mediaeval  characteristics  of  the 
legend.  After  the  drink,  the  old  French  version 
makes  the  lovers  say,  "C'est  notre  mort  que  nous 
y  avons  bue,"  and  Swinburne  exactly  responds  to 
this  keynote  of  the  poem  when  he  saj^s,  *'all  their 
life  changed  in  them,  for  they  quaffed  Death." 
But  as  we  read  the  poem,  we  become  more  and 
more  persuaded  that  the  story  was  ill-fitted  in  any 
modern  hands  for  epical  treatment,  being  essen- 
tially lyrical,  while  story -telling  was  the  weakest 
side    of    Swinburne's    multiform    talent.     There 


PUTNEY  263 

is  a  total  want  of  energy  in  the  narrative  of 
Tristram;  there  are  no  exploits,  no  feats  of 
arms ;  the  reader,  avid  for  action,  is  put  off 
with  pages  upon  pages  of  amorous  hyperbolical 
conversation  between  lovers,  who  howl  in  melodi- 
ous couplets  to  the  accompaniment  of  winds  and 
waves. 

It  is  perhaps  the  uniformity  of  effort  in  the 
texture  of  Tristram  which  produces  a  sense  of 
fatigue.  The  Prelude  —  composed,  as  we  have 
seen,  so  early  as  1871  —  is  a  magnificent  perform- 
ance. Written,  like  the  whole  poem,  in  heroic 
couplets,  it  is  as  learned  and  brilliant  a  piece  of 
studied  versification  as  we  meet  with  in  the  whole 
of  English  literature.  The  taste  for  this  particular 
kind  of  verse  may  rise  or  fall,  it  may  be  now  in 
the  fashion  or  now  out  of  it,  but  nothing  can 
permanently  oust  the  'Prelude'  to  Tristram 
from  its  position  at  the  very  forefront  of  poetical 
accomplishment.  In  what  he  sets  forth  to  do, 
Swinburne's  achievement  here  can  only  be  com- 
pared with  that  of  Shelley  in  Epipsychidion, 
which  as  a  metrical  feat  the  'Prelude'  surpasses. 
For  sustained  splendour  of  language  the  zodiac 
of  amorous  constellations,  each  with  its  feminine 
star  (11.  101-156),  is  unequalled.  Again,  at  the 
close  of  the  last  canto,  the  final  scene  of  the  dying 
Tristram,  perplexed  with  the  juggle  of  the  white 
sail  and  the  black,  is  admirably  told,  and  the 
closing  lines  are  very  striking.  But  between 
these  extremities,  and  relieved  by  marvellous 
maritime  effects,  there  are  long  stretches  of 
monotony  caused  by  strain  and  effort  to  make 
every    passage    a    purple    one.       The    poem    is 


264  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

less  a  story  than  a  homily  on  the  theme  that 
Love  is 

So  strong  that  heaven,  could  Love  bid  heaven  farewell. 
Would  turn  to  fruitless  and  unflowering  hell ; 
So  sweet  that  hell,  to  hell  could  love  be  given. 
Would  turn  to  splendid  and  sonorous  heaven,  — 

a  theme  that  Dryden  himself  could  not  illustrate 
in  the  redundanc}'^  of  an  epic. 

When  Tristram  of  Lyonesse  was  off  his  hands, 
Swinburne  was  taken  by  Watts  for  a  rather 
lengthy  visit  to  Guernsey  and  Sark,  which 
greatly  benefited  his  health,  although  he  quaintly 
complained  to  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  of  the  Puri- 
tanical restraints  of  the  former;  "Sunday  in 
Guernsey,"  he  wrote  to  her,  "is  to  a  Scotch 
Sabbath  what  a  Scotch  Sabbath  is  to  a  Parisian 
Sunday."  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  more 
than  ever  bewitched  by  the  wonders  of  the 
island  of  Cymodoce.  He  occupied  a  great  deal 
of  his  time  in  bathing  in  the  sea,  and  this  after- 
wards led  to  a  ridiculous  imbroglio,  of  which 
I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  was  the  innocent  cause. 
I  happened  to  tell  the  extraordinary  old  R.  H. 
Home  —  "Orion"  Home  —  of  Swinburne's  feats 
of  swimming,  whereupon  Home,  who  was  in 
his  eightieth  j^ear,  must  needs,  without  warning 
me,  write  Swinburne  a  challenge  to  a  public 
contest  in  natation.  The  peculiar  funniness  of 
Home  did  not  appeal  to  Swinburne's  sense  of 
humour,  and  he  was  very  angry.  "Orion" 
proposed  the  Westminster  Aquarium  as  the 
scene  of  the  race,  and  offered  to  share  the  pro- 
ceeds with  Swinburne ! 

In  the  autumn  of  1882  Swinburne  was  invited 


PUTNEY  265 

by  Victor  Hugo  to  come  over  to  Paris  and  be 
present  at  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  first 
(and  sole  previous)  representation  of  Le  Roi 
s'amuse.  The  friends  started,  and  put  up  at  an 
hotel  in  the  Rue  Saint-Honore.  In  later  years, 
it  was  a  legend  at  Putney  that  this  had  been  a 
very  wonderful  occasion,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact 
it  was  rather  a  warning  to  the  poet  to  try  no 
more  such  adventures.  Swinburne,  very  rightly, 
would  accept  no  attention  which  was  not  shared 
with  Watts,  and  Watts  was  unknown  in  Paris. 
Watts  had  not  realised  what  a  royal  position 
Victor  Hugo  occupied,  nor  to  what  a  degree  he 
was  surrounded  by  idolators.  Swinburne  must 
have  known  it  quite  well ;  he  had  helped  to  set 
Victor  Hugo  on  the  throne,  and  he  would  recollect 
the  envoi  of  Theodore  de  Banville's  ballade : 

Gautier  parmi  ces  joailliers 
Est  prince,  et  Leconte  de  Lisle 
Forge  I'or  dans  ses  ateliers ; 
Mais  le  pere  est  la-bas,  dans  Tile. 

It  is  certain  that  the  English  visitors  found 
themselves  "out  of  it"  in  the  press  of  adulation. 
On  the  22nd  of  November,  the  great  night,  they 
were  indeed  presented  to  the  super-man  for  a 
moment,  but  in  such  a  whirl  of  social  excitement 
that  they  were  hardly  sure  that  Hugo  realised 
who  Swinburne  was,  and  they  saw  him  no  more. 
Watts  reported  at  the  time  that  Swinburne  "was 
disappointed  with  both  the  poet  and  the  play"; 
this  is  incredible,  but  he  may  have  been  annoyed 
at  not  seeing  more  of  the  deity.  I  received  a 
letter  from  Swinburne  while  he  was  in  Paris,  in 
which  he  spoke  of  the  play  and  of  the  occasion,  but 


266    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

did  not  mention  Victor  Hugo.  Moreover,  his 
deafness  made  it  impossible  to  follow  the  piece. 
This  was  the  last  occasion  on  which  he  left  the 
shores  of  England.  In  this  year  he  received  a 
visit  from  James  Russell  Lowell,  who  had  attacked 
Swinburne's  early  poems  with  strange  vehemence. 
But  he  now  made  himself  *'very  pleasant,"  and 
the  old  quarrel  was  healed. 

After  a  considerable  interval,  during  which 
he  refrained  from  writing  verse,  largely  because 
he  felt  that  his  excessive  fluency  had  been  carry- 
ing him  too  loosely  on  a  wild  prosodical  gallop, 
he  returned  to  poetry  in  the  month  of  January 
1883.  He  determined,  for  the  sake  of  self- 
discipline,  to  abandon  for  a  time  his  broad  and 
sweeping  measures,  and  to  curb  his  Pegasus  with 
a  rigidly-determined  fixed  form.  He  chose  the 
rondeau,  that  metrical  structure  in  thirteen  lines, 
knit  together  by  two  rhymes,  and  with  a  refrain 
thrice  repeated,  the  laws  of  which  were  laid  down 
by  Clement  Marot  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
Swinburne  anglicised  the  word,  and  called  his 
little  poems  "roundels,"  which,  however,  was 
not  fortunate,  because  another  and  still  earlier 
form  of  verse,  which  is  quite  distinct,  bears  the 
name  of  "rondel."  The  essential  laws  which 
govern  the  construction  of  the  rondeau  admit  a 
very  considerable  elasticity  within  their  circle, 
and  Swinburne  showed  a  marvellous  aptitude  in 
combining  variety  with  an  exact  observance  of 
the  essential  laws.  He  composed  one  hundred 
of  those  little  poems,  which  he  published  in 
a  small  quarto,  dedicated  to  his  old  and  beloved 
friend  Christina  Rossetti,  in  the  spring  of  1883, 


PUTNEY  267 

The  roundels  were  largely,  though  much  less 
universally  than  has  been  said  in  haste,  concerned 
with  the  praise  of  babes,  since  Swinburne's 
passion  for  infancy  was  now  at  its  height;  but 
they  really  formed  a  garland  of  delicate  records 
of  meditation,  stored  up  through  many  years,  and 
now  first  enshrined  in  metrical  form. 

To  Swinburne's  unsurpassed  maestria,  the 
strict  laws  of  the  rondeau  offered  no  cause  of 
delay.  He  composed  A  Century  of  Roundels  with 
extraordinary  swiftness  and  ease.  He  began  the 
collection  in  the  middle  of  January  1883 ;  by 
the  6th  of  February  he  had  finished  twenty, 
four  more  by  the  9  th,  and  three  more  on  the 
following  day.  All  were  completed  before  the 
end  of  March.  The  original  MSS.,  written  on 
half-sheets  of  note-paper,  were  sent  as  they  were, 
uncopied,  to  the  printers,  and,  when  returned 
from  the  press,  were  presented  to  Miss  Isabel 
Swinburne.  They  bear  very  little  mark  of  correc- 
tion, and  may  be  considered  as  almost  improvisa- 
tions. The  final  envoi  gives  an  impression  of  the 
daintiness  and  spontaneity  of  this  very  charming 
book : 

Fly,  white  butterflies,  out  to  sea. 
Frail  pale  wings  for  the  wind  to  try. 
Small  white  wings  that  we  scarce  can  see. 

Fly. 
Here  and  there  may  a  chance-caught  eye 
Note  in  a  score  of  you  twain  or  three 
Brighter  or  darker  of  tinge  or  dye. 

Some  fly  light  as  a  laugh  of  glee. 
Some  fly  soft  as  a  low  long  sigh: 
All  to  the  haven  where  each  would  be* 

Fly. 


268  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

The  happy  and  shrouded  remainder  of  Swin- 
burne's life  is  summed  up  in  the  titles  of  his 
books.  Without  anxieties  or  duties  of  any  kind, 
his  energy  concentrated  itself  on  literature,  and 
he  became  the  book-monk  of  a  suburban  Thebais. 
All  the  charming  part  of  his  character  blossomed 
forth  anew,  his  gallantry,  his  tenderness,  his 
loyalty.  The  caprices  and  irritabilities  which 
had  marred  the  surface  of  his  nature  disappeared. 
Yet  there  were  disadvantages.  He  became  less 
amusing  and  stimulating,  although  perhaps  more 
lovable,  than  he  had  been  in  his  tumultuous 
youth ;  and  it  would  be  sacrificing  too  much  at 
the  mere  altar  of  virtue  were  we  to  pretend  that 
he  did  not,  as  a  figure,  lose  much  of  his  significance. 
The  temperament  of  Watts,  which  was  more 
practical  and  vigorous  than  his  own,  exercised  an 
unceasing  well-meant  pressure  upon  Swinburne, 
so  that  the  poet  grew  to  be  little  more  than  the 
beautiful  ghost  of  what  he  had  been  in  earlier 
^  years.  As  his  own  power  of  asserting  himself 
decayed,  or  retired  within  concealed  channels, 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  weight,  the  opinions 
and  the  force  of  W^atts  should  more  and  more 
take  its  place.  Swinburne  grew  to  live  in,  by 
and  through  W^atts,  till  at  length  his  own  will 
existed  only  in  certain  streams  of  literary  reflec- 
tion, while  even  these  were  narrowed  by  the  un- 
conscious compulsion  asserted  by  the  domination 
of  his  companion. 

The  record  of  Swinburne's  further  publications 
will  necessarily  be  brief,  since  they  hardly  concern 
the  biographer,  however  interesting  they  must 
be  to  the  critic.     In  1883  he  paid  a  memorable 


PUTNEY  269 

visit  to  Jowett  at  Emerald  Bank,  Newlands, 
near  Keswick.  A  Midsummer  Holiday  (1884) 
is  a  collection  of  lyrics,  a  considerable  number 
being  ballades  of  pure  landscape  description,  a 
task  imposed  now  upon  him  by  Watts.  At 
the  close  of  this  volume  an  odd  freak  of  temper 
is  revealed.  Some  foolish  journalist  had  said 
that  "no  man  living  or  who  ever  lived  —  not 
Shakespeare  nor  Michael  Angelo  —  could  confer 
honour  more  than  he  took  on  entering  the  House 
of  Lords"  (Dec.  15,  1883).  This  was  apropos 
of  Tennyson's  acceptance  of  a  peerage,  which 
was  highly  disapproved  of  at  The  Pines.  Between 
the  announcement  and  Tennyson's  taking  his 
seat,  Swinburne  poured  forth  an  amazing  series 
of  poems  in  vituperation  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
the  most  innocuous  of  which  occupy  too  much 
space  in  A  Midsummer  Holiday.  "Clear  the 
way,  my  Lords  and  lackeys!"  he  shrieks,  and 
the  appellations  "serf"  and  "cur"  and  "syco- 
phant" hurtle  in  vociferous  sonnets,  but  all  this 
indignation  has  no  political  significance ;  it  was 
Tennyson  whom  he  was  really  pursuing.  Mingled 
with  those  oddities,  however,  there  are  to  be  found 
in  the  volume  of  1884  some  protestations  of  a 
sincere  and  beautiful  patriotism.  Swinburne 
spent  the  autumn  of  this  year  at  the  Mill  House, 
Sidestrand,  on  the  Norfolk  coast. 

In  1885  Swinburne  published  a  blank  verse 
play  of  Italian  freedom,  Marino  Faliero,  dedi- 
cated to  Aurelio  Saffi ;  in  1886  a  prose  Study 
of  Victor  Hugo,  occasioned  by  Hugo's  death  in 
the  preceding  year;  a  collection  of  Miscellanies 
reprinted ;    and  a  play,  Locrine,  which  is  more 


270  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

worthy  of  attention  than  any  of  the  works  just 
mentioned.  Locrine  is  written  in  curious  arrange- 
ments of  rhyme;  "there  is  something  irregularly 
like  them  in  Greene's  Selimus,  as  well  as  in  Lord 
Brooke's  toughest  of  dramatic  indigestibles,"  ^ 
as  the  author  said  in  a  letter  long  afterwards. 
Locrine  was  acted  by  a  dramatic  society  early  in 
1899,  and  was  found  to  be  interesting  and  arrest- 
ing by  a  literary  audience.  No  other  play  of  Swin- 
burne's was  put  on  the  boards  during  his  lifetime. 
It  is  useless  to  deny  that  Swinburne's  friend- 
ships, which  had  formed  so  important  a  part  of 
his  life,  were  considerably  curtailed  as  soon  as  he 
retired  to  Putney.  Watts-Dun  ton  has  recorded 
that  "from  this  moment  [in  1879]  his  connection 
with  bohemian  London  ceased  entirely."  It  is 
not  necessary  to  comment  on  this  retrenchment, 
further  than  to  point  out  that  it  put  a  stop  to 
all  companionship  on  the  old  footing.  Some 
former  friends  accepted  the  embargo  and  ceased 
to  communicate  with  the  poet,  considering  them- 
selves judged  to  be  "bohemian."  Others,  like  Sir 
Richard  Burton,  braved  this  censure,  and  insisted 
on  coming  now  and  then  to  The  Pines.  During  the 
first  five  or  six  years  Swinburne  was  occasionally 
allowed  to  visit  friends  in  London  in  the  middle  of 
the  day,  but  his  deafness  was  a  growing  difficulty. 
William  Morris,  who  was  a  favourite  with  Watts, 
was  always  welcome  at  Putney,  and  Jowett 
even  more  so ;  these  were  held  to  be  wholly  un- 
tainted by  the  dangerous  "bohemian"  tendency. 
Morris  latterly  saw  less  and  less  of  Swinburne, 

^  This  is  a  reference  to  the  Alaham  and  the  Mustapha  of  Fulke  Greville 
(1633). 


PUTNEY  271 

though  he  sent  him  nearly  all  the  Kelmscott 
Press  books.  On  one  occasion  he  and  Burne- 
Jones  were  together  when  they  ran  up  against 
Swinburne,  who  seemed  unable  to  recognise  them. 
Ill-health  kept  Gabriel  and  Christina  Rossetti 
aloof;  the  rest  came  more  and  more  rarely. 
Death  was  busy  in  their  ranks :  D.  G.  R.  passed 
away  in  1882,  Lord  Houghton  in  1885,  Sir  Henry 
Taylor  in  1886,  Inchbold  in  1888,  Burton  in 
1890,  Jowett  and  Madox  Brown  in  1893,  Christina 
Rossetti  and  John  Nichol  in  1894,  W.  Morris  in 
1896,  and  lastly  Eliza  Lynn  Linton  and  Edward 
Burne- Jones  in  1898.  Swinburne  was  then  left 
with  scarcely  a  surviving  friend  from  the  old 
Pre-Raphaelite  generation,  except  the  long- 
estranged  George  Meredith,  with  whom  he  held  no 
renewed  communication  till  I  had  the  gratification 
of  bringing  the  old  friends  together  again  by  letter 
on  the  occasion  of  Meredith's  seventieth  birthday. 
This  emotional  emptiness  was  filled  by  the 
vigilant  and  assiduous  companionship  of  Theo- 
dore Watts  (who,  in  1896,  became  Watts-Dunton), 
and  by  the  affectionate  respect  which  came  to  the 
poet  from  younger  men  and  women  who  had  not 
known  him  in  the  pre-Putneyan  days.  Among 
these  special  mention  must  be  made  of  Mr.  Thomas 
J.  Wise,  Swinburne's  future  bibliographer  and 
editor,  who  was  first  taken  to  The  Pines  in  1886 
by  the  Jewish  poetess  Mathilde  Blind  (1841-96), 
whom  Swinburne  had  known  since  her  girlhood. 
Swinburne  received  such  visitors  with  unwearied 
courtesy,  and  he  took  a  pleasure  in  their  attentions, 
especially  when  they  were  ladies  who  brought 
very  young  children  with  them.     These  visitors 


272  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

were  always  delighted  with  the  welcome  he  gave 
them,  and  many  of  them  have  recorded  their 
pleasant  impressions  of  him.  It  is,  however, 
essential  to  say  that  the  very  gentle,  punctilious 
old  gentleman  who  received  them,  after  some 
delay,  in  the  unvarying  presence  of  Watts- 
Dunton,  was  very  far  indeed  from  being  the 
brilliant  being,  the  scarlet  and  azure  macaw 
among  the  birds  of  the  forest,  who  had  been  the 
wonder,  the  delight,  and  sometimes  the  terror 
of  an  earlier  generation.  He  was  the  shadow 
of  that  splendid  high-flyer.  Nor  were  the  poet's 
own  thoughts  long  absent  from  the  wonderful 
days  of  his  youth,  nor  from  those  old  dead  com- 
panions who  had  peopled  it  with  dreams ;  and 
he  celebrated  most  of  these  latter  in  verse. 

There  were  exceptions,  however,  to  Swinburne's 
amiable  attitude  towards  former  friends  long 
absent,  and  the  most  painful  of  these  was  the 
sudden  violent  attack  on  Whistler  in  the  Fort- 
nightly Review  for  June  1888.  Nothing  had 
been  seen  to  lead  up  to  this  onslaught,  which 
amused  an  idle  public,  but  startled  and  grieved 
the  victim.  Wliistler  had  been  an  intimate  and 
a  useful  friend  to  Swinburne  in  the  early  'sixties, 
and  the  poet  had  responded  warmly.  In  the 
summer  of  1865  Swinburne  had  made  strenuous 
endeavours  to  bring  Ruskin  to  Whistler's  studio, 
and  to  modify  the  critic's  prejudice  against  the 
painter.  Although  Swinburne  and  Whistler  had 
ceased  to  meet  familiarly  after  1879,  there  had 
been  no  rupture.  As  late  as  1880,  Swinburne  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  that  the  paintings  of  Whistler 
*'are  second  only  to  the  very  greatest  works  of 


PUTNEY  273 

art  in  any  age."  But  Theodore  Watts  had  never  ^"^ 
hked  Whistler,  whose  wit  had  treated  the  dignified 
critic  with  too  capricious  a  levity.  He  chose 
to  consider  the  American  painter  "a  bit  of 
a  charlatan,"  and  he  had  instilled  his  prejudice 
into  Swinburne.^  His  own  words  were,  "I 
persuaded  Swinburne  to  write  the  really  brilliant 
article."  It  was  not  "brilliant":  it  was  marred 
by  Swinburne's  worst  affectations  of  hyperbole 
and  irony,  and  can  only  be  regretted.  Whistler 
made  a  brief  reply  in  The  World  newspaper, 
in  his  characteristic  manner,  but  rather  sadly 
than  fiercely.  He  never  forgot  the  splendid 
lyric  defence  of  his  picture,  "The  Little  White 
Girl,"  which  Swinburne  had  opportunely  written 
in  1865 ;  and  so  late  as  1902  Whistler  had  the 
generosity  to  recall  that  poem  as  "a  rare  and 
graceful  tribute  from  the  poet  to  the  painter  —  a 
noble  recognition  of  work  by  the  production  of 
a  nobler  one." 

After  1884  Swinburne  gave  his  h^rical  talent  a 
certain  respite,  and  when  he  returned  to  the 
composition  of  verse,  as  he  did  in  1888,  the 
beneficial  results  of  this  were  manifest.  He  now 
wrote  "The  Armada"  and  "Pan  and  Thalassius," 
the  former  an  example  of  his  redundant  magnifi- 
cence, the  latter  of  his  subtlety.  These  are  the 
most  solid  contributions  to  Poems  and  Ballads: 
Third  Series  (1889),  which  is  also  notable  as 
containing  nine  Border  ballads  of  great  value, 
written   a   quarter   of   a   century   earlier,    during 

1  Mr.  Wise  has  kindly  communicated  to  me  the  rather  full  version  of 
the  incident  which  Watts-Dunton  dictated  to  him  in  the  last  year  of  his 
life. 


274  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

the  Pre-Raphaelite  period.  These  he  had  set 
up  in  type  in  1877,  and  had  then  suppressed 
them.  This  volume  was  dedicated,  in  charming 
Omar  Khayyam  quatrains,  to  William  Bell  Scott, 
in  memory  of  old  Northumbrian  days  — 

,  .  .  when  I  rode  by  moors  and  streams. 
Reining  my  rhymes  into  buoyant  order 
Through  honied  leagues  of  the  northland  border. 

Scott  had  now  reached  his  eightieth  year  and 
was  dying.  There  was  no  trace  then,  nor  until 
his  memoirs  were  indiscreetly  published  two  or 
three  years  later,  of  the  undercurrent  of  envious 
feeling  which  Swinburne  immediately  resented 
with  more  violence  than  dignity. 

The  late  Miss  Edith  Sichel,  shortly  before  her 
lamented  death,  was  kind  enough  to  write  out 
for  me  her  solitary  experience  of  the  poet.  It 
may  be  objected  that,  if  once  to  "see  Shelley 
plain"  is  a  small  thing,  once  to  see  Swinburne 
dimly  is  a  still  smaller  one,  but  Miss  Sichel's 
nocturne  is  so  drolly  told  that  I  make  no  apology 
for  inserting  it : 

In  the  late  autumn  of  1890,  I  happened  one  evening 
at  dusk  to  be  walking  along  the  edge  of  Wimbledon 
Common,  in  a  thick  white  mist.  Feeling  that  my  shoe- 
lace was  trailing  on  the  ground,  I  bent  down  to  tie  it. 
While  I  was  doing  so,  some  one  stumbled  over  me  and 
cried  out  "OA/"  in  a  tone  —  almost  a  squeak  —  of 
passionate  dismay.  I  looked  up  to  find  a  white  face 
immediately  above  me,  and  a  blaze  of  red  hair  which 
seemed  to  part  the  mist  like  a  flame.  In  a  flash  a  small, 
thin-legged  man's  figure  tripped  precipitately  away,  and 
the  fog  appeared  to  swallow  him  up  as  if  he  had  been 


PUTNEY  275 

a  vision.  I  felt  as  if  I  had  seen  some  Azrael  or  Uriel 
of  Blake's  creation.  I  think  he  wore  a  soft  black  wide- 
awake, but  of  this  I  am  not  sure.  After  he  had  vanished, 
I  walked  on  with  the  sense  that  something  delightful 
had  happened  to  me.  This  was  all  the  intercourse  that 
I  ever  had  with  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne. 

The  monotony  of  Swinburne's  life  was  broken 
into  in  a  manner  very  agreeable  to  him  by  his 
being  invited  to  take  a  leading  part  in  the  Eton 
Ninth  Jubilee  of  1891.  He  was  asked  to  write 
the  Ode  for  the  occasion,  a  task  which  he  accepted 
eagerly  and  executed  promptly.  In  sending  it 
in  to  the  Vice-Provost,  he  amusingly  wrote : 
"Here  is  my  copy  of  verses  —  shown  up  in  time, 
as  I  understand  —  and  I  only  hope  I  shall  not  be 
put  in  the  bill  for  showing  up  too  few."  At  the 
same  time,  he  suggested  that  the  boys  should 
act,  for  the  first  time  since  the  sixteenth  century, 
"the  very  first  comedy  in  the  language,"  Ralph 
Roister  Doister,  by  Nicholas  Udall,  Henry  VIII. 's 
Head  Master  of  Eton.  He  was  anxious  to  be 
present  at  the  proceedings  on  the  23rd  of  June, 
when  Dr.  Warre,  his  former  "  form-fellow," 
asked  him  to  stay  over  the  night  at  his  house, 
but  Watts-Dunton  declined  to  sanction  it,  and 
the  poet  submitted  w^ith  a  little,  sigh.  Mr. 
Ainger,  at  the  dinner  in  Mr.  Everard's  garden, 
when  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour  was  the  principal  guest, 
expressed  the  general  feeling  of  regret  at  Eton 
that  Mr.  Swinburne  had  been  "compelled"  to 
refuse  the  invitation. 

Swinburne's  publications  now  became  less 
frequent.  But  in  1892  appeared  a  short  play.  The 
Sisters,   which   has   already   been   dealt   with   as 


276    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

full  of  reminiscences  of  the  poet's  childhood, 
but  otherwise  of  scant  importance.  The  lyrical 
harvest  of  six  years  was  garnered  in  Astrophel, 
dedicated  in  lines  of  great  tenderness  to  William 
Morris.  Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry,  like  A 
Study  of  Ben  Jonson  which  preceded  it,  testified 
in  redundant  prose  to  the  industry,  activity, 
and  pertinacity  of  the  critic.  Full  of  years  and 
honours,  Victor  Hugo  was  dead  at  last,  but  the 
idolater  still  waved  censers  of  eulogy  in  front 
of  the  shrine.  Here,  too,  is  reprinted  the  essay, 
written  in  1887,  in  which  Swinburne,  who  had 
been  one  of  the  earliest  to  welcome  Walt  Wliit- 
man  as  a  "strong-winged  soul  with  prophetic 
lips  hot  with  the  blood-beats  of  song,"  enounced 
a  full  recantation. 

Even  as  lately  as  February  1885  he  had  written, 
*'I  retain  a  very  cordial  admiration  for  not  a 
little  of  Whitman's  earlier  work,"  and  when  I 
visited  the  Sage  at  Camden  later  in  that  year, 
Swinburne  had  sent  him  by  me  his  "cordial 
regards."  But  now  the  Muse  of  Walt  Whitman 
was  nothing  but  "a  drunken  apple-woman, 
indecently  sprawling  in  the  slush  and  garbage  of 
the  gutter  amid  the  rotten  refuse  of  her  over- 
turned fruit-stall."  This  was  an  interesting 
example  of  the  slow  tyranny  exercised  on  Swin- 
burne's judgment  by  the  will  of  Watts,  who  had 
never  been  able  to  see  merit  in  the  work  of  Walt 
Whitman,  and  who  frankly  admitted  that  he 
"hated  him  most  heartily." 

When  Tennyson  died,  and  during  the  long 
interregnum  before  the  appointment  of  Alfred 
Austin,  expert  opinion  was  practically  unanimous 


PUTNEY  277 

in  desiring  to  see  the  laureateship  offered  to 
Swinburne.  It  is  reported  that  Queen  Victoria, 
discussing  the  matter  with  Gladstone,  said,  "I 
am  told  that  Mr.  Swinburne  is  the  best  poet  in 
my  dominions."  But  Gladstone  held  the  view 
that  the  turbulency  of  Sw^inburne's  political 
opinions,  particularly  as  expressed  with  regard 
to  certain  friendly  foreign  powers,  made  it 
impossible  even  to  consider  his  claims  to  the 
laurel.  Swinburne  preserved  a  complete  silence 
on  the  subject,  so  far  as  the  newspaper  reporters 
were  concerned.  In  private  he  expressed  the 
conviction  that  Canon  Dixon,  the  author  of 
Mario,  possessed  the  highest  claim  to  be  poet- 
laureate,  or,  failing  him.  Lord  De  Tabley.  It 
will  be  observed  that  each  of  these  poets  was 
older  than  Swinburne,  who  had  little  knowledge 
of  the  verse  of  men  born  after  1850,  and  even 
less  curiosity  about  their  careers. 

In  the  summer  of  1895,  when  his  mind  was  \ 
greatly  occupied  with  memories  of  his  childhood, 
and  of  the  dear  Northumbrian  faces  that  had 
passed  away  so  long  ago,  Swinburne  started 
The  Tale  of  Balen,  an  Arthurian  story  of  the 
Border  country.  This  is,  with  the  exception 
of  Tristram,  the  longest  narrative  poem  which  he 
composed,  and  it  is  in  many  respects  a  very 
remarkable  performance.  It  is  unquestionably 
the  best  work  of  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life. 
Yet  for  the  biographer  the  principal  interest  of 
Balen  lies  in  the  evidence  it  gives  that  Swinburne 
was  now  living  more  and  more  among  the  phan- 
toms of  the  past.  Like  his  hero  before  his  ; 
death,  -^ 


278  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

He  drank  the  draught  of  life's  first  wine 
Again  ;   he  saw  the  moorland  shine, 
The  rioting  rapids  of  the  Tyne, 

The  woods,  the  cHffs,  the  sea ; 
The  joy  that  hves  at  heart  and  home. 
The  joy  to  rest,  the  joy  to  roam, 
The  joy  of  crags  and  scaurs  he  clomb. 
The  rapture  of  the  encountering  foam 

Embraced  and  breasted  of  the  boy. 
The  first  good  steed  his  knees  bestrode. 
The  first  wild  sound  of  songs  that  flowed 
Through  ears  that  thrilled  and  heart  that  glowed, 

Fulfilled  his  death  with  joy. 

In  these  lines  the  legendary  Sir  Balen  was 
forgotten,  and  the  curtain  of  half  a  century  fell 
back  to  reveal  the  little  Algernon  who  once  rode 
and  climbed,  swam  and  shouted,  in  the  bright, 
sharp  air  of  Northumberland. 

A  copy  of  The  Tale  of  Balen  was  sent  by  Swin- 
burne to  William  Morris,  who  was  too  ill  to  do 
more  than  glance  at  it.  Morris  died  on  the 
3rd  of  October  1896.  Though  his  name  is  not 
mentioned,  Swinburne  referred  to  Morris  in  the 
epilogue  to  A  Channel  Passage,  in  the  lines  : 

No  braver,  no  trustier,  no  purer. 

No  stronger  and  clearer  a  soul 
Bore  witness  more  splendid  and  surer 

For  manhood  found  perfect  and  whole 
Since  man  was  a  warrior  and  dreamer 

Than  his  who  in  hatred  of  wrong 
Would  fain  have  arisen  a  redeemer 
By  sword  or  by  song. 

With  Morris's  socialistic  aspirations  Swinburne 
at  no  time  found  himself  in  sympathy,  and  the 
reference  is  therefore  the  more  generous. 

The  Tale  of  Balen  was  dedicated  to  the  only 


PUTNEY  279 

survivor  who  could  share  the  earliest  of  these 
reminiscences,  to  the  poet's  venerable  mother, 
now  settled  at  Barking  Hall,  where,  on  the  19th  of 
July  1896,  Lady  Jane  Swinburne  was  welcomed  on 
the  morning  of  her  eighty-seventh  birthday  by 
an  ode  in  which  her  son  enshrined  his  tenderness, 
his  reverence,  and  his  adoring  affection.  But 
on  the  26th  of  November  of  that  same  year  "the 
woods  that  watched  her  waking"  beheld  that 
gracious  form  no  more.  The  grief  of  her  son  was 
overwhelming,  and  it  may  be  said  that  this  formed 
the  last  crisis  of  his  own  life.  From  this  moment 
he  became  even  more  gentle,  more  remote,  more 
unupbraiding  than  ever.  He  went  on  gliding 
over  the  commons  of  Wimbledon  with  the  old 
noiseless  regularity,  but  it  could  hardly  be  said 
that  he  held  a  place  any  longer  in  the  ordinary 
world  around  him. 

The  thirteen  last  years  of  Swinburne's  life 
were  spent  almost  as  if  within  a  Leyden  jar. 
Nothing  could  be  more  motionless  than  the 
existence  of  "the  little  old  genius,  and  his  little 
old  acolyte,  in  their  dull  little  villa."  Swinburne 
still  brightened  up,  with  punctilious  courtesy,  at 
the  approach  of  any  visitor  who  contrived  to 
break  through  the  double  guard  of  the  house- 
maid and  of  Watts-Dunton.  He  would  still 
stand  by  his  shelf  of  precious  quartos  and  astonish 
a  guest,  as  he  did  the  Dutch  novelist,  Maarten 
Maartens,  by  presenting  volume  after  volume 
for  inspection,  with  "the  strangely  dancing 
quiver  and  flash  of  his  little  body,  like  a  living 
flame."  Still  on  moderate  pressure  he  would 
read  aloud  with  a  mannered  outpour  of  tumultuous 


280  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

utterance,  and  then  sink  back,  exhausted  and 
radiant.  Still  he  would  talk,  in  the  familiar 
tones,  of  the  life-long  objects  of  his  admiration,  of 
Landor  and  Hugo  and  Marlowe,  of  Northumber- 
land and  Niton  and  Sark,  "bobbing  all  the  while 
like  a  cork  on  the  sea  of  his  enthusiasms."  Still 
he  would  dream,  with  eyelids  wide  open,  long 
gazing  at  the  light  in  silence,  until,  as  Mr.  Coulson 
Kernahan  has  admirably  said,  "one  could  see 
by  his  flashing  eyes  that  the  hounds  of  utterance 
were  chafing  and  fretting  to  fling  themselves  on 
the  quarry,"  and  then  the  torrent  of  reminiscent 
speech  would  follow. 

Under  the  ceaseless  vigilance  of  his  faithful 
shield  and  companion  the  placid  months  went 
by  until,  in  November  1903,  after  one  of  his  long 
walks  in  the  rain,  Swinburne  caught  a  chill  which 
presently  developed  into  a  dangerous  attack  of 
pneumonia.  With  great  difficulty  his  life  was 
saved  by  the  assiduity  and  skill  of  Sir  Thomas 
Barlow.  From  this  time  forth  his  lungs  remained 
delicate,  but  he  lived  nearly  six  years  longer. 
Several  publications  amused  his  leisure  during 
the  placid  close  of  his  career  —  a  collection  of 
lyrical  poems,  A  Channel  Passage  (1904) ;  a 
novel.  Love's  Cross-Currents  (1905,  but  written 
twenty -nine  years  earlier) ;  and  the  opening  of 
a  drama,  The  Duke  of  Gandia  (1908,  but  started 
in  1882).  He  persisted  in  writing  verses,  as^  he 
frankly  confessed,  "to  escape  from  boredom." 
He  continued  to  enjoy  good  health,  although  now 
as  prematurely  old  as  in  early  days  he  had  been 
conspicuously  young  for  his  years.  Nothing 
foreshadowed    a   change   when   only    a   fortnight 


PUTNEY  281 

before  his  death  he  received  at  The  Pines  Mr. 
James  Fitzmaurice-Kelly,  who  has  been  kind 
enough  to  give  me  his  impressions  of  the  visit. 
"Mr.  Swinburne,"  he  writes,  "returned  from  his 
usual  walk,  looking  tired,  but  not  evidently- 
unwell.  After  luncheon  he  invited  me  to  go  up 
to  his  study  and  look  at  his  books.  They  were 
fewer  than  one  might  expect  to  find  in  the  study 
of  a  famous  man-of -letters.  Swinburne  displayed 
his  collection  of  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean 
dramatists  with  ingenuous  pride,  and  when  I 
ventured  to  compliment  him  on  his  rarities,  he 
smiled  and  said,  'Yes!  not  bad  for  a  poor  man, 
are  they  ? '  Glancing  at  the  other  books  on  the 
shelves,  I  caught  sight  of  various  volumes  of 
Victor  Hugo,  very  much  the  worse  for  wear.  In 
reply  to  some  remark  about  them,  Swinburne 
replied,  'They  ought  to  go  to  the  binder,  but 
I  can't  bear  to  part  with  them.'" 

It  was,  therefore,  in  the  unabated  fervour  of 
a  life-time  that  death  found  this  faithful  lover 
of  Marlowe  and  Hugo.  His  illness  was  brief 
and  scarcely  painful.  The  sharpness  of  Easter 
in  1909  produced  an  epidemic  of  influenza  at  The 
Pines,  which  affected  every  member  of  Watts - 
Dunton's  household,  and  in  Swinburne's  case 
brought  on  what  soon  became  double  pneumonia. 
His  physician,  Dr.  Edwin  White,  sent  for  Sir 
Douglas  Powell,  but  the  course  of  the  disease 
could  not  be  arrested,  and  the  poet  died,  very 
peacefully,  on  the  10th  of  April  1909,  having 
entered  his  seventy -third  year  by  five  days. 

Algernon  Swinburne  was  buried  in  the  romantic 
churchyard   of  Bonchurch,   in   the   midst   of   the 


282    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

graves  of  his  family.  He  lies  in  that  beautiful 
orchard-terrace,  within  an  apple-cast  of  the  garden 
in  which  his  childhood  was  so  happily  spent.  On 
loud  nights  the  trumpet  of  the  sea  is  audible  from 
the  spot  where  he  sleeps,  and  so,  in  the  words 
dedicated  to  his  memory  by  the  greatest  of  his 
successors, 

.  .  .  here,  beneath  the  waking  constellations. 
Where  the  waves  peal  their  everlasting  strains. 
And  their  dull  subterrene  reverberations 
Shake  him  when  storms  make  mountains  of  their  plains  — 
Him  once  their  peer  in  sad  improvisations, 
And  deft  as  wind  to  cleave  their  frothy  manes,  — 
I  leave  him,  while  the  daylight  gleam  declines 
Upon  the  capes  and  chines.^ 

^  Thomas  Hardy :  "A  Singer  Asleep." 


CHAPTER  IX 

PERSONAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

The  connection  which  undoubtedly  exists,  in 
certain  cases  only,  between  imaginative  gifts  of 
a  high  order  and  peculiarities  of  physical  con- 
formation, has  never  been  explained.  It  is  not 
by  mere  accident  that  Chopin  and  Raphael  and 
Shelley  have  a  constitution  and  an  appearance 
so  unlike  those  of  ordinary  mortals,  nor  is  it  the 
rule  that  men  of  genius  are,  like  Walter  Scott 
and  Robert  Browning,  healthy  examples  of  the 
ordinary  type.  There  is  no  rule  or  custom  in  the 
matter,  and  great  talents  blow  where  they  list. 
Nevertheless  there  is  a  tendency  to  strangeness, 
an  excess  or  violence  of  delicacy,  which  is  pro- 
verbially associated  with  poetry,  and  with  the 
bardic  appearance  of  exclusively  aesthetic  persons. 
This,  although  not  the  rule,  is  more  than  the 
exception,  and,  where  it  occurs,  is  not  to  be 
neglected  as  an  element  in  the  general  analysis 
of  character.  In  the  case  of  Swinburne  the 
physical  strangeness  exceeded,  perhaps,  that  of 
any  other  entirely  sane  man  of  imaginative  genius 
whose  characteristics  have  been  preserved  for  us. 
It  must  be  defined  with  as  much  exactitude  as  is 
possible  without  falling  into  the  error  of  caricature. 
Algernon    Swinburne    was    in    height   five   feet 

283 


284  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

and  four  and  a  half  inches.  He  carried  his  large 
head  verj'-  buoyantly  on  a  tiny  frame,  the  apparent 
fragility  of  which  was  exaggerated  by  the  sloping 
of  his  shoulders,  which  gave  him,  almost  into 
middle  life,  a  girlish  look.  He  held  himself 
upright,  and,  as  he  w^as  very  restless,  he  skipped 
as  he  stood,  with  his  hands  jerking  or  linked 
behind  him  while  he  talked,  and,  when  he  was 
still,  one  toe  was  often  pressed  against  the  heel 
of  the  other  foot.  In  this  attitude  his  slenderness 
and  slightness  gave  him  a  kind  of  fairy  look, 
which  I,  for  one,  have  never  seen  repeated  in  any 
other  human  being.  It  recurs  to  my  memory  as 
his  greatest  outward  peculiarity. 

His  head  was  bigger  than  that  of  most  men 
of  his  height ;  as  Sir  George  Young  tells  us,  when 
he  entered  Eton  at  twelve  years  old  his  hat 
was  already  the  largest  in  the  school.  Mr. 
Lindo  Myers,  who  came  over  with  him  from 
Havre  in  the  autumn  of  1868,  writes  to  me,  that, 
Swinburne's  hat  having  been  blown  overboard, 
"when  we  got  to  Southampton,  we  went  to  three 
hatters  before  we  found  one  hat  that  would  go 
on,  and  then  we  had  to  rip  the  lining  out.  His 
head  was  immense."  In  the  late  Putney  days, 
when  he  became  bald,  this  bigness  of  his  head 
was  less  noticeable  than  when  it  had  been 
emphasised  by  the  vast  "burning  bush"  of  his 
red  hair,  which  in  early  days  he  wore  very  much 
fluffed  out  at  the  sides.  Lord  Redesdale  always 
used  to  speak  of  Algernon's  "zazzera."  This  is 
an  old  Italian  word  for  a  great  head  of  blond 
hair  combed  out  to  its  full  circumference.  A 
poet   of    the    sixteenth    century,    quoted    by    the 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      285 

Dizionario  delta  Crusca,  says  "Biondo  fue  nella 
chioma,  sicclie  tutta  la  sua  zazzera  sembrava 
splendore  d'oro."  This  might  have  been  written 
of  Swinburne  in  his  youth.  The  orb  of  this  mop 
reduced  the  apparent  thickness  of  his  neck, 
which,  looked  at  merely  in  relation  to  his  falling 
shoulders,  was  excessive,  yet  seemed  no  more 
than  was  necessary  to  carry  the  balloon  of  head 
and  hair.  In  a  guarded  and  ironic  sketch  of 
life  "  At  The  Pines"  ^  —  a  sketch  which  deserves 
close  attention  —  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas  remarks  that 
Swinburne's  eyes  in  the  later  years  "were  fixed 
and  mirthless."  He  had  always  had  this  steady 
look.  "Above  the  eyes,  however,"  Mr.  Lucas 
proceeds,  "all  was  different  and  magnificent  — 
a  dome  lofty  and  aloof  as  one  could  ask,  curiously 
like  Shakespeare's."  One  of  the  contradictions 
which  we  meet  with  in  every  attempt  to  analyse 
Swinburne's  character  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  although  he  seemed  so  fragile  and  so  light, 
the  muscular  endurance  of  his  frame  was  remark- 
able. His  untiring  little  legs  might  have  been 
made  of  steel  wire. 

As  Watts-Dunton,  towards  his  eightieth  year, 
and  when  his  memory  was  certainly  not  any 
longer  very  fresh,  chose  to  select  D.  G.  Rossetti's 
painting  of  Swinburne,  dated  1861,  and  now  in  the 
Fitzwilliam  Museum  at  Cambridge,  as  that  which 
he  particularly  recommended,  it  seems  needful 
to  explain  why  this  opinion  must  not  be  endorsed. 
If  posterity  accepts  the  view  that  Rossetti's 
portrait  "brings  back"  the  appearance  of  Swin- 
burne   "more   than   any   other,"    the   conception 

1  The  New  Statesman,  March  25,  1916. 


286  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

of  what  he  really  looked  like  will  be  entirely  lost. 
That  drawing  is  a  careful  Pre-Raphaelite  study, 
but  it  is  essentially  unlike  its  subject.  The 
proportions  of  the  face  are  wrong;  the  forehead 
is  reduced  in  height  and  breadth ;  the  nose  is 
too  fleshy ;  the  weakness  of  the  mouth  is  avoided ; 
the  chin  is  square  and  prominent,  instead  of 
pointed  and  retreating;  and  the  throat  is  almost 
a  goitre.  But  the  great  fault  of  this  picture,  as 
a  portrait,  is  that,  though  individual  features 
may  be  correct,  the  whole  gives  a  false  conception 
of  general  character.  Rossetti  has  painted  his 
young  friend  as  a  Knight  of  the  Table  Round, 
languishing  for  the  Sangraal  and  for  remote 
adventures.  The  real  Swinburne  was  not  heavy, 
burly,  and  almost  lethargic,  like  this  Arthurian 
conception  of  him,  but  light  with  the  lightness 
of  thistle-down,  when  aroused  as  alert  as  a 
terrier,  and  habitually  thrilled  with  a  quite 
modern  type  of  intellectual  energy. 

It  is  in  the  expression  of  the  eyes  that  Rossetti 
has  peculiarly  gone  astray ;  he  has  made  the  eyes 
large,  and  a  fleur  de  tete^  and  gazing  languorously 
sideways;  whereas  Swinburne's  greenish-grey 
eyes  (which  Rossetti  has  painted  light-blue) 
were  small,  and  deeply  set,  and  were  fixed 
straight  before  him  with  surprising  intensity.  Mr. 
Adams'  impression  of  what  the  poet  looked  like 
in  1862,  at  almost  the  very  time  when  Rossetti 
was  painting  him,  gives  the  true  portrait :  "A 
tropical  bird,  high-crested,  long-beaked,  quick- 
moving,  with  rapid  utterance  and  screams  of 
humour."  Pellegrini's  famous  coloured  drawing, 
made  in  the  winter  of  1874,  displays  him  very 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      287 

accurately,  with  of  course  the  caricaturist's  ex- 
aggeration, as  he  looked  twelve  years  after  Mr. 
Adaras  saw  him  at  Fryston,  but  here  again  the 
eyes  are  wrong.  No  artist  seems  to  have  con- 
trived to  record  the  flashing  concentration  of 
Swinburne's  level  look. 

The  mental  and  moral  characteristics  which 
distinguished  the  actions  of  this  singular  being 
were  no  less  remarkable  than  the  physical.  In 
dealing  with  Algernon  Swinburne's  character  we 
are  struck  with  the  fact  that  it  was,  to  a  very 
unusual  extent,  what  the  biologists  call  epigenetic, 
that  is  to  say,  its  qualities  owed  very  little 
to  heredity.  When  we  examined  his  parentage 
we  saw  that  no  one  at  all  resembling  him  in- 
tellectually had  hitherto  been  observed  either  in 
the  Swinburne  or  in  the  Ashburnham  family, 
while  such  idiosyncrasies  as  could  have  been 
inherited  were  purely  physical,  and  neither  mental 
nor  moral.  He  was  started  in  life  so  original 
that  he  resisted  all  the  pressure  of  education,  and 
it  would  be  difficult  to  find  another  man,  brought 
up  at  Eton  and  Oxford,  who  has  continued  so 
unlike  all  other  human  beings  as  Swinburne  was. 
Yet  he  was  neither  abnormal  nor  a  monster. 
In  favourable  conditions  he  was  lovable,  gentle, 
capable  of  the  most  generous  enthusiasm,  active, 
essentially  healthy  and  sound  ;  what  distinguished 
him  from  others  was  not  a  degeneracy  or  disease, 
but  a  difference.  He  was  successfully  modelled 
in  a  mould  unlike  most,  and  perhaps  all,  of  his 
fellow-creatures.  His  deeper  faculties  worked 
in  a  verj'-  curious  way,  and  sometimes  bafiled 
analysis  altogether. 


288    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

This  analysis  is  rendered  the  more  difficult 
because  of  the  discrepancies  which  showed  them- 
selves in  his  behaviour.  Intrinsically,  Swin- 
burne's character  was  as  firm  as  a  twist  of  iron, 
which  bends  under  pressure,  but  is  otherwise 
unaffected  by  outer  forces.  From  the  earliest 
record  of  his  childhood  to  that  of  his  last  hours  at 
Putney,  we  see  him  unchanged  by  conditions  and 
unaffected  by  opinion.  This  gives  his  career 
a  certain  rigidity,  which  appears  to  be  belied 
by  the  fact  that  he  was  dependent,  even  to 
excess,  upon  the  support  of  others,  and  that  his 
conversation  and  correspondence  took  the  colour 
of  his  associates.  When  he  was  successively 
"under  the  influence,"  as  it  is  called,  of  Jowett 
or  Burton,  of  Rossetti  or  Watts-Dunton,  Swin- 
burne bowed  his  will  in  the  direction  of  each  of 
them  in  turn,  dipping  towards  them  like  a  mag- 
netic needle  towards  its  pole.  In  the  same  way, 
there  were  people  who  repelled  him,  in  spite  of 
his  admiration  of  their  gifts  and  his  desire  to  be 
affected  by  them ;  especially  this  was  true  of 
Ruskin  and  Browning.  When  he  was  in  a  state 
of  magnetic  induction,  Swinburne  would  appear 
to  a  superficial  observer  so  docile,  so  absorbed 
in  renunciation,  as  to  have  no  personal  force  left. 
He  reposed,  in  passive  adoration,  upon  the  bosom 
of  the  adored  one,  —  the  great  instance  of  this, 
in  the  intellectual  sphere,  being  his  attitude  to 
Victor  Hugo.  It  is  probable  that  if  Hugo  had 
suddenly  become  insane,  without  that  fact  being 
explained  to  Swinburne,  the  latter  would  have 
continued  to  accept,  without  the  slightest  sus- 
picion,   the   ravings   of   his   idol.     Yet   who   was 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS,    289 

more  shrewd  than  he  in  observing  a  lapse  in 
Browning  or  a  fault  in  Byron? 

Although  so  far  removed  from  the  type  with 
which  his  contemporaries  were  familiar,  Swinburne 
was  not  conscious  of  smy  difference,  and  strove  to 
avoid  everything  like  affectation  or  eccentricity. 
He  was  invariably  dressed  with  care,  in  the  exact 
mode  of  the  hour,  —  at  least  until  he  went  to 
Putney,  when  his  retirement  from  all  society 
excused  a  less  punctilious  clothing.  At  the 
moment  of  his  great  notoriety,  a  firm  of  London 
tailors  published  a  portrait  of  Swinburne  as  "an 
illustration  of  our  full  dress  suit" !  His  hair  was 
always  unusually  long,  but  he  accounted  for  that 
by  saying  that  it  was  a  concession  to  the  painters, 
who  preferred  it  so.  His  manners  were  elaborate, 
and,  when  he  chose,  exquisite ;  in  this  respect  he 
was  very  human  :  he  could  be  radiantly  courteous 
if  he  pleased,  and  he  could  be  of  a  stony  stiffness. 

He  was  a  little  too  ready,  in  middle  life,  to  take 
offence,  and  he  showed  it  by  an  excess  of  dignity 
and  hauteur :  he  would  respond  to  an  explosion  of 
familiarity  by  a  prodigious  bowing  and  stiffening 
of  his  arrogant  little  body.  Often,  or  at  least 
sometimes,  he  gave  an  impression  of  defiance, 
which  was  really  an  instinct  of  self-defence,  for 
he  disliked  promiscuous  contact  and  a  "hail- 
fellow-well-met"  behaviour.  But  to  a  man  or 
woman  with  whom  he  found  himself  in  pleasant 
relations,  he  was  suave  and  gracious  in  the 
extreme,  only  apt  to  bewilder  a  newly-made 
acquaintance  by  taking  for  granted  in  him  an 
exact  agreement  of  interests  with  himself.  Thus 
have  I  seen  an  architect  gratified  by  receiving 


290  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Swinburne's  pointed  attentions,  yet  driven  to 
despair  in  the  effort  to  discover  what  could  be 
the  Arden  of  Feversham  which  was  the  subject 
of  his  conversation. 

In  a  valuable  letter  to  myself  the  late  Dutch 
novelist,  J.  M.  W.  van  der  Poorten-Schwartz,  who 
paid  his  respects  to  Swinburne  in  his  later  days, 
has  recorded  of  him:  "In  the  unique  diversity 
of  the  British  race  he  struck  me  at  once  as  an 
Englishman  of  birth.  I  knew  nothing  about 
his  social  position,  but  he  was  manifestly  a 
foreigner  and  an  English  aristocrat."  The  acute- 
ness  of  this  remark  is  double,  because  in  calling 
the  poet  "manifestly  a  foreigner,"  the  visitor 
expressed  his  sense  of  that  unlikeness  to  all  his 
contemporaries  which  has  already  been  mentioned, 
and  in  insisting  upon  his  "birth"  he  showed 
recognition  of  the  poet's  remarkable  distinction 
of  manner.  He  was  essentially  an  aristocrat, 
in  spite  of  the  boisterousness  of  his  republicanism, 
and  in  this  combination  or  contrast  the  examples 
of  Mirabeau  and  of  Landor  help  us  to  understand 
Swinburne,  of  whom  it  might  be  justly  remarked, 
as  it  was  of  the  author  of  Gebir,  that  he  was  one 
"not  only  rebellious  himself,  but  a  promoter  of 
Rebellion  in  others."  This  attitude  of  political 
/  non-conformity  showed  itself,  as  we  have  seen, 
/  in  his  early  Oxford  days,  and  it  persisted  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  It  was  largely  an  exotic  senti- 
\  ment,  fostered  by  literature,  by  his  early  love 
of  Italy  and  Italian  things,  and  by  the  romance 
which  surrounded  Mazzini  as  with  a  halo.  If 
a  reader  has  the  curiosity  to  isolate  all  that 
Swinburne   has   said   about   republicanism   apart 


/ 
PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      291 

from  Italy,  and  France  in  relation  to  Italy, 
he  will  be  surprised  to  find  how  small  the 
residue  is. 

In  particular,  there  is  not,  so  far  as  I  recollect, 
in  all  the  voluminous  writings  of  Swinburne  a 
single  line  in  which  the  English  Constitution  or 
the  Monarchy  is  attacked.  In  a  few  pieces,  such 
as  An  Appeal  (Nov.  20,  1867),  we  find  England 
called  upon  to  "put  forth  thy  strength,  and 
release"  persecuted  republicans  in  other  countries. 
In  "The  Twilight  of  the  Lords"  he  seems  to  call 
for  a  constitutional  change ;  but  it  is  only  in  the 
visionary  verses  called  "Perinde  ac  Cadaver" 
that  anything  can  be  pointed  to  that  resembles  a 
reproach  to  this  country  for  not  joining  the  con- 
federacy of  the  liberated  nations,  and  even  then 
the  answer  comes  in  the  question,  "We  have  filed 
the  teeth  of  the  snake.  Monarchy,  how  should 
it  bite.'*"  In  the  "Litany  of  Nations,"  when 
it  is  England's  turn  to  speak,  she  invokes  Milton 
and  Shelley  with  rhetorical  remoteness,  and 
characteristically  describes  "the  beacon-bright 
Republic"  as  "far-off  sighted."  This  attitude 
to  the  Government  of  his  own  country  must  not 
be  overlooked,  because  Swinburne  was  perfectly 
fearless,  and,  if  it  had  pleased  him  to  do  so,  would 
have  attacked  English  institutions  as  freely  as 
he  denounced  "Strong  Germany  girdled  with 
guile."  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  adored  his 
own  country  to  the  verge  of  Jingoism,  and  resented 
with  what  seemed  to  strangers  inconsistent 
violence  the  slightest  criticism  of  Queen  Victoria. 
Lady  Ritchie  remembers  his  saying  with  great 
simplicity,    in   answer   to    the    question,    "What 


292  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

would  you  give  for  England?"  "I  would  give 
my  life."  At  the  time  of  the  Land  League 
agitation,  a  Fenian  emissary  visited  The  Pines, 
with  a  request  that  Swinburne  would  write  an 
Ode  on  the  Proclamation  of  an  Irish  Republic. 
Watts-Dunton  used  to  give  a  humorous  descrip- 
tion of  the  swift  retreat  of  the  burly  visitor  in 
the  wind  of  the  rage  of  the  indignant  poet,  who 
bid  him  begone  before  he  so  far  overcame  his 
repulsion  as  to  kick  the  intruder  down  stairs. 
What  he  did  write  was  *'The  Ballad  of  Truthful 
Charles,"  ^  which  no  one  has  yet  had  the  fortitude 
to  place  in  his  collected  poems. 

It  is  riot  to  be  questioned  that,  under  the 
pressure  of  Theodore  Watts,  Swinburne's  political 
opinions  took  a  singular  volte-face  after  1879. 
The  author  of  Songs  before  Sunrise  and  Songs 
of  Two  Nations  ought  to  have  been  a  pro-Boer, 
but  he  was  violently  the  reverse.  He  developed 
a  strong  dislike  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  he  hated 
his  scheme  of  Home  Rule,  which  the  early 
rhapsodist  would  have  welcomed.  At  the  time 
of  the  Midlothian  campaign,  1879-80,  Swin- 
burne wrote  the  following  lines  in  a  lady's 
album : 

Choose,  England :  here  the  paths  before  thee  part. 
Wouldst  thou  have  honour  ?  Be  as  now  thou  art ; 
Wouldst  thou  have  shame  ?     Take  Gladstone  to  thy  heart. 

The  only  form  in  which  his  youthful  republicanism 
survived  was  in  an  intense  hatred  of  the  professed 
tyrants  and  destroyers  of  liberty,  in  the  van  of 

1  Privately  printed  by  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise,  with  other  uncollected  pieces, 
in  April  1910. 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS     293 

whom  he  placed  the  rulers  of  Germany.  He 
expatiated  to  the  last  in  praise  of 

England,  elect  of  time, 
By  freedom  sealed  sublime. 

After  reading  J.  S.  Mill's  Autobiography,  he  had 
told  John  Morley  (March  28,  1874),  "I  never  had 
the  honour  to  meet  [Mill],  but  ever  since  his 
Liberty  came  out,  it  has  been  the  text-book  of 
my  creed  as  to  public  morals  and  political  faith." 
In  1899  no  one  dared  to  approach  him  with 
an  invitation  to  celebrate  either  of  the  South 
African  republics.  At  the  moment  when  war 
broke  out  he  wrote  the  fine  sonnet  which  closes 
with  the  words,  "Strike,  England,  and  strike 
home."  This  was  followed  by  others,  all  inspired 
by  the  noblest  and  purest  indignation,  and  by  a 
burning  pride  in  our  country.  At  the  darkest 
moment,  the  old  poet  rejoiced  at  the  vision  of 
*' England's  name  a  light  on  land  and  sea,"  and 
boasted  that  — 

Alone,  as  Milton  and  as  Wordsworth  found 
And  hailed  their  England,  when  from  all  around 

Howled  all  the  recreant  hate  of  envious  knaves, 
Sublime  she  stands. 

When  the  proper  time  for  publication  comes 
it  will  be  found,  with  interest  and  perhaps  sur- 
prise, how  accurately  Swinburne  predicted  the 
treachery  of  Germany  almost  with  his  latest 
lyric  breath. 

He  went  far  in  his  attitude  of  complacency 
with  what  might  even  be  called  British  prejudice, 
but  he  did  not  admit,  and  we  need  not  perceive, 
any  inconsistency  between  this  "Jingo"  patriotism 


294    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

and  the  ardours  of  his  youthful  republicanism. 
He  would  have  said  that  what  he  desired  was 
liberty  for  nations  that  are  still  captive,  and  not 
the  disturbance  of  those  that  are  already  free. 
But  his  generous  and  emotional  political  opinions 
must  not  be  too  rudely  examined. 

In  a  life  where  action  took  scarcely  any  part 
at  all,  the  spoken  word  came  to  be  only  second 
in  importance  to  the  written  word.  A  Scotchman 
who  met  Swinburne  when  he  was  staying  with 
Nichol  at  Glasgow  early  in  1878  said,  "He  is  one 
of  the  finest  talkers  of  sense,  and  certainly  the 
best  talker  of  nonsense  I  have  ever  met  with." 
A  still  earlier  witness  speaks  of  "the  wild  Wal- 
purgis  night  of  Swinburne's  talk."  His  conversa- 
tion was  vehement  and  copious ;  it  was  usually 
concerned  with  literature,  with  which  Swinburne 
showed  a  familiarity  and  an  enthusiasm  which 
were  extraordinary.  His  criticism  in  conversa- 
tion was  exceedingly  stimulating,  partly  because 
it  was  independent  and  resolute,  and  partly 
because  it  was  illuminated,  far  more  than  his 
written  criticism,  by  whimsical  flashes  of  humour 
and  startling  colloquial  images.  Perhaps  I  may 
be  permitted  to  give  an  example  not  hitherto 
printed.  It  is  an  extract  from  a  journal,  and 
records  a  visit  paid  to  my  house  on  the  16th 
of  August  1876  :  J 

Swinburne  complained  of  having  been  unwell,  and 
he  described  his  symptoms  with  an  infantile  ingenuous- 
ness and  perfect  plausibiHty.  He  was  weak  and  pale 
at  first,  but  soon  brightened  into  a  good  flow  of  talk, 
first  about  dramatic  literature.  He  has  never  been  able 
to  read  Bailey's  Festus  through.     The  diflference  between 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      295 

Festus  and  the  Balder  of  Sydney  Dobell  is  the  same  as 
that  between  Mr.  Mantalini's  dowager  who  had  a  demd 
outline  and  the  countess  who  had  no  outHne  at  all. 
Bailey  had  no  ear  and  no  metrical  power  at  all,  but  he 
had  a  demd  outline.  Dobell,  on  the  contrary,  had  no 
outline  at  all,  but  he  never  wrote  a  bad  verse.  Swinburne 
recited  with  enthusiasm  the  passage  about 

.  .  .  hellebore,  like  a  girl  murderess, 
Green-eyed  and  sick  with  jealousy,  and  white 
With  wintry  thoughts  of  poison, 

and  so  on,  down  to  the  "inglorious  moschatel,"  in 
Balder.  We  passed  to  Beddoes,  of  whom  he  said  that 
no  one  else  had  ever  written  plays  so  utterly  wanting 
in  conversational  truth.  The  dialogue  in  Death's  Jest- 
Book  was  the  howls  of  madmen  trying  to  out-stun  one 
another.  Of  course  Browning  delights  in  Beddoes  as  the 
only  WTiter  of  dialogue  worse  than  himself.  I  suggested 
Byron  was  worse,  but  Swinburne  waved  that  aside,  and 
said  that  Byron's  plays  were  indeed  flatter  and  less 
poetical  than  Browning's,  but  the  conversation  in  them 
was  more  reasonable.  We  then  talked  of  Wordsworth's 
single  play,  The  Borderers;  Swinburne  expressing  great 
admiration  of  it  as  a  juvenile  production,  and  noting 
with  surprise  the  morbid  hectic  tone  of  its  ethics.  He 
would  like  to  know  what  was  passing  in  Wordsworth's 
life  when  he  wrote  it :  it  is  far  superior,  as  a  psychological 
product,  to  Coleridge's  Remorse.  He  praised  the  King 
Otho  of  Keats,  but  of  the  Ariosto  vein  of  that  poet  he 
spoke  with  the  greatest  contempt.  He  thought  the 
vulgarity  of  The  Cap  and  Bells  quite  extraordinary; 
he  had  drawn  the  attention  of  D.  G.  R.  to  it,  who  had  said 
that  if  it  stood  alone  it  would  justify  all  Maga's  insolence 
to  Keats.  It  alarmed  Swinburne  to  think  that  Keats 
should  have  gone  "back  to  his  gallipots"  after  composing 
Hyperion  and  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  and  that  The  Cap 
and  Bells  should  be  the  latest  of  Keats'  productions.  He 
pursed  up  his  mouth  and  made  an  owlish  gesture  with 
his  eyes,  as  he  added,  "It  gives  one  a  horrid  thought!" 


296    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

With  this,  the  record  of  one  who  was  con- 
stantly seeing  Swinburne  at  that  time,  may  be 
compared  the  impressions  of  a  very  acute  observer, 
Professor  Andrew  C.  Bradley,  who  saw  him  only 
twice : 

I  had  a  momentary  vision  of  him  in  my  first  year  at 
Balliol  between  October  1869  and  June  1870,  when  he 
came  down  into  the  Garden  Quadrangle  with  Jowett. 
But  some  seven  years  later  I  was  in  the  same  room  with 
him  for  an  hour  or  more.  Jowett  was  then  Master,  and 
I  a  young  don  whom  he  knew  to  be  interested  in 
poetry;  and  he  asked  me  to  look  in  after  dinner  to 
meet  Swinburne,  who  had  come  with  Watts  to  stay 
with  him.  As  soon  as  I  entered  the  drawing-room  he 
introduced  me.  I  had  a  surprise.  The  poet's  hand,  as 
I  took  it,  turned  out  to  be  plump  and  flabby  —  not  to  say 
podgy  —  whereas  I  expected  it  to  be  nervous  and  thin. 
His  cloud  of  hair  was  of  the  old  red  colour,  but  there  was 
a  suspicion,  I  think,  of  baldness,  and  his  eyes  seemed  to 
me  a  little  faded;  but  perhaps  what  had  faded  was  really 
some  of  my  hero-worship.  Their  colour  I  should  call 
blue-grey  with  a  tinge  of  green.  He  was  very  kind,  and 
talked  to  me  for  some  time  without  a  trace  of  patronage 
or  self -consciousness.  When  he  became  animated  —  and 
he  was  so  for  most  of  the  time  —  he  flapped  his  hands 
continuously,  even  reminding  me,  though  not  painfully, 
of  a  man  I  once  saw  who  suffered  from  a  mild  form  of 
St.  Vitus's  dance.  What  I  can  now  remember  of  his 
talk  is  little  enough.  I  spoke  to  him  with  enthusiasm 
of  "Mater  Triumphalis " ;  and  that  pleased  him,  but  he 
said  —  what  to  me  sounded  almost  blasphemous  —  that  it 
threatened  to  go  on  for  ever  and  he  cut  it  short.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  metre  of  this  poem  that  made  me  ask  him  if 
he  knew  Myers'  Saint  Paul,  and  what  he  thought  of  the 
metrical  effect :  but  he  had  not  read  it.  I  questioned 
him  about  Beddoes,  whom  I  had  just  read  for  the  first 
time,  and  he  spoke  of  him  rather  coolly,  and  said  that 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS      297 

his  lyrics  did  not  sing.  He  talked  delightfully  about 
Rossetti's  poems,  quoting  the  first  stanza  of  the  Bride's 
Prelude  (which  was  not  published  until  a  dozen  years 
later),  and  he  quoted  it  very  musically.  After  a  while 
he  began  to  declaim  against  some  of  the  Idylls  of  the 
King  and  to  make  fun  of  the  Dedication,  and  went  on  to 
describe  some  kind  of  burlesque  he  had  written,  in  which 
Queen  Victoria  figured  as  Guinevere  and  Lord  John 
Russell,  I  think,  as  Lancelot.  He  was  beginning  to 
quote  from  it,  and  became  excited  and  shrill ;  and,  as 
the  matter  promised  to  be  indecorous  and  the  room  was 
full  of  ladies,  I  was  half -amused  and  half-alarmed :  but 
Jowett  came  up  and  interrupted  us  —  not,  I  think, 
because  he  heard  what  Swinburne  was  saying,  but  because 
I  had  had  my  full  share  of  the  great  man. 

In  1881  Jowett  sent  Swinburne  up  to  the 
Bodleian  Library  with  a  note  addressed  to  Mr. 
F.  Madan,  now  Bodley's  Librarian,  asking  him 
to  turn  the  poet  loose  in  the  Malone  Room,  where 
the  treasures  of  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  drama 
are  kept  in  a  delightful,  unconventional  kind  of 
cottage  "parlour,"  with  a  homely  look  and  in 
a  quiet  out-of-the-way  position.  Mr.  Madan 
writes  to  me : 

It  was  impossible  to  allow  any  one  to  be  alone  in 
the  room,  so  I  went  down  with  Swinburne,  who  was 
soon  pulling  down  volume  after  volume  of  that  seduc- 
tive literature,  absolutely  absorbed  in  it.  When  I 
occasionally  made  some  remark,  suggesting  a  new  shelf 
for  his  attention,  he  used  to  give  a  violent  start  as 
if  hit,  fully  illustrating  the  common  expression  "struck 
with  a  sudden  thought."  This  was  not  resentment  of 
interruption,  but  extreme  nervous  sensitiveness. 

Professor  W.  P.  Ker  tells  me  that  he  dined  in 
Swinburne's  company,  as  the  guest  of  John  Nichol, 


298    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

on  the  31st  of  March  1891.  Orchardson  and  Mrs. 
Lynn  Linton  were  also  present,  with  others  : 

Swinburne  talked  mostly  to  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton  about 
Landor,  and  took  no  part  in  the  general  conversation, 
until  a  young  Scotchman  lately  come  from  Paris  declared 
that  he  understood  the  writings  of  Stephane  Mallarme. 
Swinburne  who  was  sitting  next  to  him,  turned  upon 
him  crying  and  flashing  out,  "Then  I  suppose  you  will 
say  that  you  understand  Cyril  Tourneur's  Transformed 
Metamorphosis?''  I  was  glad  to  see  him  so  suddenly 
liven  us,  but  I  wish  he  had  said  something  less  like  the 
controversial  style  of  Freeman. 

But  it  appeared  that  the  young  man  had  spoken 
of  Victor  Hugo  in  a  manner  of  which  Swinburne 
disapproved. 

To  these  early  impressions  may  be  added  that 
of  Mr.  Sidney  C.  Cockerell,  who  went  with  Mr. 
Emery  Walker  to  dine  at  The  Pines  so  late  as  the 
29th  of  September  1904.  Mr.  Cockerell  has  been 
kind  enough  to  give  me  a  copy  of  what  he  noted 
the  next  day : 

Went  with  Emery  Walker  to  dine  with  Swinburne 
and  Watts-Dunton  at  The  Pines.  Watts-Dunton  talked 
well  at  dinner,  but  Swinburne  (who  looked  very  well  and 
young  —  his  beard  still  with  a  tinge  of  red  in  it)  said 
nothing  until  we  were  half  way  through,  when  he 
suddenly  burst  out  with  a  eulogy  of  The  Two  Noble 
Kinsmen  and  expressed  his  wonder  that  it  had  never 
been  acted.  He  also  spoke  of  his  reading  Arden  of 
Feversham  at  Oxford  and  coming  to  the  conclusion  that, 
if  not  by  Shakespeare,  it  was  by  some  one  capable  of 
even  greater  things  than  Shakespeare  was  capable  of 
at  the  time  when  it  was  written.  After  dinner  we  went 
up  into  his  room  and  he  delighted  us  by  reading  out  two 
fine  scenes  from  his  new  unfinished  play  on  the  Borgias. 
He    read    in    a    loud    and    dramatic    manner,    with    much 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      299 

nervous  movement,  enforcing  every  sentence.  I  took 
my  Bembo  and  Catullus  MSS.  and  the  Ovid  containing 
Ben  Jonson's  signature,  with  all  of  which  he  was  greatly 
pleased.  He  said  that  Catullus  was  the  first  Latin 
author  to  please  him  at  Eton,  Virgil  and  Horace  having 
obviously  written  with  the  sole  object  of  tormenting 
school-boys ;  and  that  Bembo's  Latin  verse  and  Italian 
prose  were  respectively  the  best  done  in  his  day. 

He  was  not  disinclined,  on  occasion,  to  refer 
to  himself  with  an  engaging  frankness,  as  if  he 
were  speaking  of  some  one  else.  At  Jowett's 
dinner-table  R.  W.  Raper  once  asked  him  which 
of  the  English  poets  had  the  best  ear.  Swin- 
burne replied  with  earnestness  and  gravity : 
*' Shakespeare,  without  doubt;  then  Milton; 
then  Shelley;  then,  I  do  not  know  what  other 
people  would  do,  but  I  should  put  myself." 

These  are  fragments  of  the  habitual  "table- 
talk"  of  Swinburne,  which  flowed  in  this  way 
from  theme  to  theme  with  an  inexhaustible 
humour  and  resource,  but  was  almost  wholly 
of  an  aesthetic,  if  not  purely  literary,  character. 
It  had,  even  by  the  year  1876,  lost  some  of  its 
disconcerting  brilliance  and  daring.  Of  these, 
the  best  report  yet  forthcoming  is  that  bequeathed 
to  us  by  Guy  de  Maupassant,  who  met  him  at 
Etretat  in  1868.  What  struck  that  remarkable 
observer  was  the  "almost  supernatural"  aspect 
of  the  amazing  English  poet : 

II  fut  tres  cordial,  tres  accueillant;  et  le  charme 
extraordinaire  de  son  intelligence  me  seduisait  aussitot. 
Pendant  tout  le  dejeuner  on  parla  d'art,  de  litterature 
et  d'humanite;  et  les  opinions  de  [Swinburne]  jetaient 
sur  les  choses  une  espece  de  lueur  troublante,  macabre, 
car  il  avait  une  maniere  de  voir  et  de  comprendre  qui  me 


300  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

le  montrait  comme  un  visionnaire  malade,  ivre  de  poesie 
perverse  et  magique.  .  .  .  Mais  il  etait  delicieux  de 
fantaisie  et  de  lyrisme.  .  .  .  Swinburne  paria  de  Victor 
Hugo  avec  un  enthousiasme  infini. 

Maupassant  afterwards  allowed  his  imagina- 
tion to  run  away  with  him  regarding  the  house- 
hold of  Swinburne  and  his  surroundings  at 
Etretat.  His  legends  amused  Paris  in  later  days, 
and  when  the  echo  of  them  reached  Putney, 
Swinburne  was  justly  incensed.  But  Mau- 
passant's earliest  unvarnished  impression  of  the 
poet's  conversation  and  manner  is  admirable. 
The  French  are  masters  of  the  art  of  observation, 
and  their  records  have  an  unprejudiced  value. 
I  may  therefore  be  allowed  to  print  here  the 
report  of  M.  Rene  Maizeroy,  written  down  im- 
mediately after  meeting  Swinburne  in  Paris : 

Rien  qu'a  voir  la  silhouette  etrange  de  I'homme, 
comrae  echappee  d'un  conte  fantastique  de  Poe,  ce 
corps  maigre,  raidi,  secoue  de  frissons  nerveux,  les  yeux 
fixes,  dilatees  comme  par  la  contemplation  de  subtiles 
visions  de  reve,  I'impressionnante  mobilite  des  traits,  les 
levres  pales,  le  front  demesure  autour  duquel  flottent  des 
cheveux  ni  blonds,  ni  roux,  on  se  sent  en  presence  de 
quelque  artiste  bizarre  et  passionne.  .  .  .  Swinburne 
est  .  .  .  hante  de  chimeres  radieuses,  toujours  pour- 
suivi  par  d'impossibles  et  d'eperdus  desirs  et  trouble  par 
la  pensee  macabre  de  la  Mort. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  each  of  these  independent 
observers  uses  the  word  "macabre,"  to  describe 
one  part  of  Swinburne's  conversation,  in  which 
a  sort  of  aesthetic  value  in  the  circumstance  of 
pain  and  horror  was  insisted  on,  with  a  rather 
childish  dwelling  upon  dead  bodies  and  skeletons. 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      301 

that  struck  some  observers  as  being  more  serious 
than  it  really  was.  This  love  of  the  horrible 
was  reflected,  to  some  degree,  in  his  early  poetry, 
but  was  vigorously,  and  properly,  stamped  out 
by  Watts-Dunton,  who  could  not  endure  it. 
There  was  a  side  of  Swinburne,  in  his  early 
maturity,  which  delighted  in  being  "horrid," 
in  the  sense  of  Miss  Catherine  Morland  in  North- 
anger  Abbey.  Legends  have  been  spread,  and 
more  will  doubtless  turn  up,  in  support  of  this 
charge  of  being  "macabre."  They  must  not  all 
be  credited,  nor  must  they  all  be  summarily 
denied,  because  they  are  based  on  a  certain 
rebellious  impishness,  a  desire  "to  make  your 
flesh  creep,"  which  was  eminently  characteristic 
of  the  early  Swinburne.  He  liked  to  be  what 
Parisian  journalists  used  to  call  "schoking";  and 
this  must  not  be  ignored  as  a  part  of  his  instinc- 
tive passion  for  revolt  against  authority. 

As  every  development  of  character  in  Swin- 
burne was  justified  and  fostered  by  literature, 
we  may  look  with  confidence  to  his  early  reading 
of  such  vehement  writers  as  Milton,  Landor,  and 
Carlyle  for  the  sources  of  his  rebellious  attitude 
to  society.  It  was  largely  intellectual,  for  he  did 
not  rebel  with  any  consecutive  violence  against 
the  laws  of  the  land.  But  the  idea  of  "passive 
obedience"  filled  him  with  wrath,  and  he  could 
not  write  about  so  elegant  and  frosty  a  poet 
as  Collins  without  a  diatribe  on  "the  divine 
right  and  the  godlike  duty  of  tyrannicide."  To 
a  nature  such  as  Swinburne's  a  single  book  will 
sometimes  come  in  early  youth  with  an  appeal 
so   penetrating   and  at  the  same  time  s,o  over- 


302  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

whelming  that  the  whole  nature  is,  for  the  rest 
of  life,  subdued  and  tinctured  by  it.  So  to 
Swinburne  came  Les  Chdtiments  of  Victor  Hugo, 
published  in  1853,  when  the  English  boy  was 
entering  his  seventeenth  year,  and  in  a  condition 
of  the  keenest  precocious  susceptibility.  It 
seemed  to  him  then,  as  it  continued  to  seem 
until  the  end  of  his  life,  that  "if  ever  a  more 
superb  structure  of  lyric  verse  was  devised  by 
the  brain  of  man"  it  must  have  been  in  some 
language  unknown  to  him.  It  was  not  the  style, 
but  the  temper  of  it,  which  passed  into  his 
blood. 

The  dominant  note  of  Les  Chdtiments  is  one 
of  arrogant  indignation,  splendid  scorn,  withering 
and  melodious  invective.  If  Swinburne  had 
first  met  with  this  mass  of  inflammatory  verse 
at  a  later  date,  when  his  own  taste  was  more 
mature,  it  is  probable,  nay,  almost  certain,  that 
he  would  have  perceived  in  it  faults  of  vociferous 
and  mechanical  over-emphasis.  He  might  have 
hesitated  before  flinging  himself  before  the  re- 
markable exile  of  Jersey,  and  calling  him  "the 
omnipotent  sovereign  of  song,"  on  the  single 
score  of  his  rodomontade  against  "dead  dogs 
and  rotting  Caesars."  And  it  is  noticeable  that 
Les  Contemplations,  much  as  he  applauded  them, 
never  approached  Les  Chdtiments  in  their  effect 
upon  Swinburne's  temperament,  mainly,  no  doubt, 
because  they  were  published  three  years  later, 
and  did  not  reach  him  till  his  taste  had  reached 
a  point  where  it  was  no  longer  subject  to  much 
modification.  From  the  satirical  poems  of  Hugo  — 
the  Hugo   travestied   as   Juvenal   in   such  pieces 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      303 

as  "Lazare"  and  "L'Empereur  s'amuse"  — 
Swinburne  adopted  a  certain  attitude  of  being 
astride  the  barricade  of  existence,  shouting  at  the 
top  of  his  voice,  with  a  flambeau  in  his  fist.  It 
was  inconsistent  with  the  dignity,  gentleness,  and 
docility  which  were  also  natural  to  him. 

These  latter  were  much  accentuated  in  his 
declining  years.  An  observer  of  more  than 
usual  penetration  visited  him  in  the  spring  of 
1899,  and  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  obliges  me  with 
some  notes  of  great  value : 

A  strange  small  figure  in  grey,  having  an  air  at  once 
noble  and  roguish,  proud  and  skittish.  My  name  was 
roared  to  him.  In  shaking  his  hand,  I  bowed  low,  of 
course,  —  a  bow  du  cceur ;  and  he,  in  the  old  aristocratic 
manner,  bowed  equally  low,  but  with  such  swiftness 
that  we  narrowly  escaped  concussion.  .  .  .  The  first 
impression  he  made  on  me,  or  would  make  on  any  one, 
was  of  a  very  great  gentleman  indeed.  Not  of  an  old 
gentleman  either.  [He  was,  in  fact,  not  62.]  Sparse 
and  straggling  though  the  grey  hair  was  that  fringed  the 
immense  pale  dome  of  his  head,  and  venerably  haloed 
though  he  was  for  me  by  his  greatness,  there  was  yet 
about  him  something  —  boyish  ?  girHsh  ?  childish,  rather ; 
something  of  a  beautifully  well-bred  child.  But  he  had 
the  eyes  of  a  god  and  the  smile  of  an  elf.  In  figure,  at 
first  sight,  he  seemed  almost  fat,  but  this  was  merely 
because  of  the  way  he  carried  himself,  with  his  long  neck 
strained  so  tightly  back  that  he  all  receded  from  the 
waist  upwards.  .  .  .  When  he  bowed,  he  did  not  unbend 
his  back,  but  only  his  neck  —  the  length  of  the  neck 
accounting  for  the  depth  of  the  bow.  His  hands  were 
tiny,  even  for  his  size,  and  they  fluttered  helplessly, 
touchingly,  unceasingly. 

In  absolute  contrast,  too,  to  his  rebellious  and 
tempestuous    effusion,    was    the    intense    delight 


304  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

which  he  unaffectedly  felt  in  the  company  of  little 
children.  This  did  not,  I  believe,  develop  very 
early ;  I  have  not  found  any  traces  of  it  before 
1870,  and  it  did  not  until  very  much  later  take 
those  proportions  which  made  Swinburne  at 
Putney  the  idol  of  mothers  and  the  laughing- 
stock of  nursery-maids.  Here,  again,  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  see  in  what  became  a  perfectly 
natural  and  sincere  movement  an  impulse  origi- 
nally coming  less  from  life  than  from  literature. 

It  has  been  crudely  said  that  Swinburne 
pretended  to  be  fond  of  infants  because  Victor 
Hugo  had  written  poems  about  them.  This  is 
false;  no  one  less  than  Swinburne  "pretended" 
to  be  this  or  that,  no  one  must  be  defended  as 
possessing  a  more  perfect  personal  sincerity.  But 
it  is  very  doubtful  whether  he  would  have  noticed 
the  beauty  of  little  children  if  Hugo  had  not 
called  his  attention  to  it,  and  it  is  within  the 
recollection  of  some  of  us  that  the  publication 
of  UArt  d'etre  grand-pere  in  1878  was  coeval 
with  a  tremendous  revival  of  Swinburne's  admira- 
tion of  the  babies  of  his  friends,  and  that  it 
stimulated  the  composition  of  such  songs  as  the 
delicious 

Golden  bells  of  welcome  rolled 
Never  forth  such  notes,  nor  told 
Hours  so  blithe  in  tones  so  bold, 
As  the  radiant  mouth  of  gold 

Here  that  rings  forth  heaven 
If  the  golden-crested  wren 
Were  a  nightingale  —  why,  then, 
Something  seen  and  heard  of  men 
Might  be  half  as  sweet  as  when 

Laughs  a  child  of  seven. 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      305 

The  sentiment  expressed  here,  and  so  often 
elsewhere,  was  perfectly  genuine.  Swinburne 
was  never  more  radiantly  happy  than  when 
passively  enduring  hardships  from  babes,  and 
some  of  the  most  delightful  recollections  of  him 
that  mj^  wife  and  I  possess  are  connected  with 
the  infancy  of  our  own  little  ones.  I  shall  never 
lose  from  my  memory  the  picture  of  the  poet 
seated  stiffly  on  the  sofa  (his  favourite  station) 
in  our  house,  with  one  of  my  small  girls  perched 
on  each  of  his  little  knees,  while  my  son,  just 
advanced  to  knickerbockers,  having  climbed  up 
behind  him,  with  open  palm  was  softly  stroking 
his  bald  cranium,  as  though  it  had  been  the  warm 
and  delicious  egg  of  some  enormous  bird.  At 
that  moment  the  rapturous  face  of  the  poet  wore 
no  trace  of  the  tyrannicide. 

There  is  something  very  attractive  in  the 
accessibility  of  those  who  are  difficult  of  approach. 
Swinburne  was  not  at  the  beck  and  call  of  stray 
applicants,  but  he  could,  on  due  occasion,  be 
extremely  gracious.  I  owe  to  the  kindness  of 
H.  H.  the  Ranee  of  Sarawak  an  affecting  example 
of  this.  It  was  early,  it  appears,  in  1893  that  her 
younger  son,  after  a  long  illness,  was  ordered  to 
Wimbledon,  where  a  very  severe  operation  was 
performed  on  him.  As  he  was  recovering,  the 
boy  was  taken  out  daily  in  a  Bath  chair  on 
Wimbledon  Common,  and  so  crossed  the  poet's 
regular  walk.  "One  day,  when  Bertram  seemed 
more  cast  down  than  ever,  and  depressed  by  his 
illness,"  says  the  Ranee,  "I  asked  him  what  I 
could  do  or  get  for  him,  as  I  would  do  anything 
that  was  possible  to  cheer  him  up.     'Well,'  he 


306    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

answered,  '  I  want  but  one  thing,  and  that  is  — 
to  know  Mr.  Swinburne.  I  see  him  almost  every 
day,  and  I  do  so  wish  that  he  would  once  speak 
to  me!'"  The  Ranee  was  greatly  perplexed, 
for  she  knew  no  one  who  was  intimate  with  the 
poet.  By  a  fortunate  chance,  however.  Lady 
Ritchie  called  on  her  that  very  afternoon,  and 
she,  when  she  heard  the  story,  said,  "Come 
along!  I  will  take  you  to  Mr.  Swinburne  now!'* 
The  Ranee  continues  the  narrative : 

A  fourwheeler  was  procured  in  which  we  rumbled 
from  Wimbledon  to  Putney.  Conceive  my  excitement  I 
We  rang  the  bell  at  The  Pines,  and  —  both  of  us  —  were 
let  in.  We  were  led  up  two  flights  of  stairs  into  the 
poet's  room,  where  he  stood  with  his  back  to  the  chimney. 
Lady  Ritchie  told  our  story,  when  Swinburne  said, 
"I'll  come  at  once.  Only  wait  till  I  get  my  boots  on." 
So  we  sat  down  at  each  end  of  a  table,  whilst  Swinburne 
pulled  off  a  pair  of  scarlet  flannel  slippers,  and  then 
proceeded  to  hunt  for  his  boots.  These  not  turning  up, 
he  wandered  into  several  rooms,  reappearing  again,  after 
a  long  while,  triumphant,  boots  in  hand.  He  put  them 
on  before  us,  and  then  and  there  we  carried  him  back  in 
the  fourwheeler  to  our  house  in  Wimbledon.  You  may 
imagine  the  delight  of  my  boy.  The  beloved  Poet's 
visit,  and  his  subsequent  ones  (for  they  were  many,  and 
covered  weeks  and  months),  were  a  principal  factor  in 
Bertram's  subsequent  recovery.  I  could  tell  you  much 
of  those  many  visits,  and  of  Swinburne's  kindness,  his 
dear  funny  ways,  his  sense  of  humour,  his  readings  of 
Dickens,  the  extraordinary  humble  way  (and  he  so  great !) 
in  which  he  consulted  Bertram  about  certain  lines  in  his 
"Grace  Darling,"  which  he  was  then  writing. 

Swinburne  was  a  great  declaimer  and  reciter^ 
both  of  his  own  poems  and  those  of  others.  His 
voice  was  a  strange  but  extremely  agreeable  one> 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      307 

when  he  did  not  allow  it  to  get  beyond  his  control. 
It  was  "the  pure  Ashburnham  voice,"  as  Lord 
Redesdale  tells  me,  which  his  mother  had  "passed 
down  to  him  and  to  no  other  of  her  children." 
Mr.  James  Fitzmaurice-Kelly  reminds  me  of  Swin- 
burne's "exquisite  clearness  of  utterance,  particu- 
larly noticeable  in  his  pronunciation  of  such 
words  as  'Ariosto,'  in  which  he  reproduced  the 
full  rich  quality  of  the  Italian  vowels  with 
perfect  correctness."  As  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm 
says,  "the  frail,  sweet  voice  rose  and  fell,  lingered, 
quickened,  in  all  manner  of  trills  and  roulades. 
That  he  himself  could  not  hear  it  seemed  the 
greatest  loss  his  deafness  inflicted  on  him."  To 
the  last  he  spoke  in  a  gentle  tone ;  unlike  most 
deaf  people,  he  did  not  raise  his  voice  when  he 
talked,  except  under  excitement.  "Save  that 
now  and  again  a  note  would  come  out  metallic 
and  overpitched,  the  tones  were  under  good 
control." 

Elsewhere  I  have  described  the  funny  little 
ritual  which  Swinburne  always  went  through 
after  arriving  at  a  friend's  house  with  a  breast- 
pocket bulging  with  manuscript.  I  do  not 
remember  any  variation  in  this  ceremony,  which 
sometimes  preluded  many  hours  of  reading  and 
recitation.  He  delighted  in  repeating  other 
poetry,  and  was  particularly  ready  to  spout 
the  dramas  of  ^schylus,  when  he  would  gradually 
become  intoxicated  by  the  sonority  of  the  Greek, 
and  would  dance  about  the  room  in  the  choral 
passages,  making  a  very  surprising  noise.  These 
performances  were  entrancing  to  some  persons, 
of   whom   I   was   one,    but   annoying   and   even 


308    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

alarming  to  others.  Watts-Dunton  did  not  per- 
mit them  after  the  exodus  to  The  Pines,  when 
Swinburne,  although  he  read  aloud  and  recited 
more  than  ever,  was  not  allowed  to  be  corybantic. 
Maarten  Maartens,  to  whom  the  poet  read  The 
Tale  of  Balen  in  June  1895,  did  not  unreservedly 
admire  his  delivery : 

It  was  too  subjective  an  out-pour,  and  wearisomely 
impassioned,  like  a  child's  jump  against  a  wall,  but  it 
was  his  appropriate  utterance  of  his  own  creation.  You 
fslt  the  immediate  concord  between  the  travail  and  the 
bringing  forth.  At  the  first  moment,  however,  when  he 
ceased,  I  felt  a  poignant  grief  that  it  was  over,  a  past 
experience  in  my  life,  an  emotion  of  poetic  sympathy 
I  should  never  feel  again.  It  had  been  very  beautiful. 
Gloriously,  and  to  me  quite  newly,  direct;  all  the  differ- 
ence between  seeing  a  beautiful  woman  and  feeling  her 
embrace. 

A  great  deal  of  the  prejudice  which  was  felt 
against  Swinburne  in  his  early  and  middle  life 
arose  from  the  fact  that  he  allowed  himself 
to  speak  in  somewhat  reckless  terms  about  the 
established  forms  of  religion.  His  conversation, 
like  his  poems,  was  frequently  ornamented  with 
violent  denunciation  of  priests,  nor  has  a  certain 
section  of  our  reading  public  ever  forgiven  him 
for  the  "Hymn  of  Man,"  which  he  wrote  during 
the  session  in  Rome  of  the  (Ecumenical  Council. 
It  will  not  be  contended  by  Swinburne's  best 
friends  that  his  wonderful  gift  of  metaphor  did 
not  tempt  him  to  outbursts  which  in  his  more 
temperate  moods  he  could  hardly  seek  to  justify. 
He  had,  to  use  his  own  hitherto  unpublished 
words,    "a    touch    of    Byronic    ambition    to    be 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      309 

thought  an  eminent  and  terrible  enemy  to  the 
decorous  life  and  respectable  fashion  of  the  world ; 
and,  as  in  Byron's  case,  there  was  mingled  with 
a  sincere  scorn  and  horror  of  hypocrisy  a  boyish 
and  voluble  affectation  of  audacity  and  excess." 
He  admitted  that  it  was  a  pleasure  to  him  to 
flutter  the  Philistines  in  Gath.  On  this  subject 
his  own  words  outweigh  all  other  testimony ; 
and  these  we  possess  in  a  letter  (Feb.  21,  1875) 
addressed  to  E.  C.  Stedman : 

A  Theist  I  never  was;  I  always  felt  by  instinct  and 
perceived  by  reason  that  no  man  could  conceive  of  a 
personal  God  except  by  crude  superstition  or  else  by  true 
supernatural  revelation ;  that  a  natural  God  was  the 
absurdest  of  all  human  figments ;  because  no  man  could 
by  other  than  apocalyptic  means  —  that  is,  by  other  means 
than  a  violation  of  the  laws  and  order  of  nature  —  conceive 
of  any  other  sort  of  Divine  purpose  than  man  with  a 
difference  —  man  with  some  qualities  intensified  and  some 
qualities  suppressed  —  man  with  the  good  in  him  ex- 
aggerated and  the  evil  excised.  .  .  .  But  we  who  wor- 
ship no  material  incarnation  of  any  qualities,  no  person, 
may  worship  the  Divine  humanity,  the  ideal  of  human 
perfection  and  aspiration,  without  worshipping  any  god, 
any  person,  any  fetish  at  all.  Therefore  I  might  call 
myself,  if  I  wished,  a  kind  of  Christian  (of  the  Church 
of  Blake  and  Shelley),  but  assuredly  in  no  sense  a  Theist. 

When  he  wrote  this,  he  had  just  been  reading 
with  great  emotion  Matthew  Arnold's  ^"very  good 
and  fine"  Literature  and  Dogma,  ostensibly  to 
see  whether  Arnold  gave  him  any  reasons  for 
abandoning  the  Pantheistic  attitude  which  he  had 
himself  defined  in  "Hertha"  and  elsewhere. 
But  this  book  only  confirmed  him  in  what  he 
called    a    "clarified    Nihilism"    with    regard    to 


310    ALGERNON   CHARLES    SWINBURNE 

all  faith  which  is  founded  upon  an  anthropo- 
morphic illusion.  The  only  degree  in  which 
Swinburne,  to  the  very  end  of  his  life,  approached 
orthodox  Christianity  was  in  his  reiterated  ex- 
pressions of  reverence  for  Christ  as  the  type 
of  human  aspiration  and  perfection;  "Jesus 
may  have  been  the  highest  and  purest  sample  of 
man  on  record,"  he  would  grant,  and  this  was 
the  limit  of  his  acquiescence.  The  best  summing- 
up  of  his  pantheism  is  to  be  found  in  the  lofty 
stanzas  of  "Hertha." 

An  almost  religious  character  accompanied 
his  ideas  of  friendship,  which  he  understood  as 
involving  a  certain  amount  of  devotion  and,  at 
least  theoretically,  of  sacrifice.  Those  who  have 
followed  this  record  of  his  life  will  be  aware  of 
the  absorbing  part  which  Swinburne's  friends 
occupied  in  his  thoughts  and  actions.  He  was 
not  very  effusive  in  his  protestations  of  affection, 
and  in  his  social  relations  he  usually  kept  himself, 
with  a  certain  dignity,  a  little  aloof  from  even 
those  whom  he  most  admired  and  loved.  He 
was  seldom  demonstrative,  and  he  greatly  disliked 
a  "gushing"  or  overconfidential  manner;  per- 
haps one  of  his  most  charming  traits  was  the 
refinement  of  his  reserve.  But  he  cultivated 
the  essentials  of  friendship  with  great  care,  and 
he  was  loyal  to  those  to  whom  he  had  once 
surrendered  his  heart.  Forty  years  after  their 
Oxford  days  together,  and  when  they  had  been 
drawn  far  from  one  another  by  circumstances, 
news  of  the  sinking  health  of  William  Morris 
drew  from  Swinburne  to  Burne-Jones  a  most 
delicate    and    tender    communication,    in    which 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      311 

he  told  his  old  friends  that  he  often  composed 
letters  to  them  both  in  his  mind,  —  "Such  letters, 
my  dear  Ned,  as  St.  Jerome  might  have  indited 
to  St.  Augustine  if  they  had  been  contemporaries, 
as  no  doubt  they  were  capable  of  being."  They 
were  priests  together  in  the  service  of  art,  which 
to  Swinburne  was  religion,  and  there  existed, 
besides,  the  ties  of  old  companionship  and  un- 
broken personal  confidence. 

For  some  objects  of  his  intellectual  admiration, 
Swinburne  frankly  cultivated  a  worship  which 
seemed  uncouth  to  the  profane.  His  attitude 
to  old  men  of  genius,  or  even  of  beautiful  talent, 
was  unique ;  he  was  adorable  in  humility  and 
sweetness  to  Landor,  to  Barry  Cornwall,  to  that 
wild  pirate  Trelawney,  to  the  still  wilder  Wells 
of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren.  He  delighted  in  the 
abandonment  of  praising  these  aged  heroes,  and 
he  thrilled  to  meet  their  gratified  response.  "It 
is  comfortable,"  he  said  on  one  occasion,  "when 
one  does,  once  in  a  way,  go  in  for  a  complete 
quiet  bit  of  hero-worship,  and  it  is  an  honest 
interlude  of  relief  to  find  it  taken  up  instead  of 
thrown  away."  After  describing  the  idolatry 
with  which  he  flung  himself  at  the  feet  of  Landor 
in  1864,  he  wrote :  "I  am  not  sure  that  any  other 
emotion  is  so  endurable  and  persistently  delicious 
as  that  of  worship,  when  your  god  is  indubitable 
and  incarnate  before  your  eyes."  In  his  ecstasy 
he  clothed  these  divinities  with  the  glory  of  his 
own  imagination,  and  poor  old  threadbare  Bryan 
Waller  Procter  marched  in  a  splendour  of  lauda- 
tion "to  the  beautiful  veiled  bright  world  where 
the  glad  ghosts  meet."     A  friend  who  watched 


312  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

him  closely  says:  "It  was  one  of  Swinburne's 
charms,  that  he  took  for  granted  every  one's 
delight  in  what  he  himself  so  fervidly  delighted 
in.  He  could  as  soon  have  imagined  a  man  not 
loving  the  very  sea  as  not  doting  on  the  aspect 
of  babies  or  not  reading  at  least  one  play  by  an 
Elizabethan  or  Jacobean  dramatist  every  day." 

This  generous  extravagance  was  not  without 
its  inconvenient  side.  Where  the  interests  of 
two  sentiments  clashed,  it  was  impossible  to 
induce  Swinburne  to  compromise,  and  his  refusal 
to  yield  one  iota  of  his  selected  loyalty  not  un- 
frequently  exposed  him  to  the  censure  of  his 
acquaintances.  A  single  instance,  with  the 
ramifications  of  which  I  was  personally  well 
acquainted,  will  serve  to  exemplify  this  trait. 
In  the  summer  of  1876,  Robert  Buchanan  brought 
a  suit  for  libel  against  the  Examiner  newspaper, 
grounded  on  a  pseudonymous  article,  which  was 
written  by  Swinburne.  This  marked  the  last  stage 
of  the  celebrated  "Fleshly  School"  controversy. 
The  Examiner  was  defended  by  Hawkins 
(afterwards  Lord  Brampton),  then  pre-eminent 
in  public  opinion  through  his  recent  conduct  of 
the  Tichborne  case.  It  was  held  that  Buchanan 
had  no  chance  of  success,  but  it  appeared  necessary 
that  Hawkins  should  have  a  private  consultation 
with  Swinburne  before  the  trial.  This  Swinburne 
flatly  refused  to  give,  to  the  consternation  of 
W^illiam  Minto,  the  editor  of  the  Examiner,  who 
had  always  treated  Swinburne  with  the  highest 
consideration  and  friendliness.  In  vain  was  this 
presented  to  the  poet,  and  in  vain  was  it  pressed 
home  to  him  that  it  was  his  own  vivacity  which 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS      313 

had  got  the  Examiner  into  trouble.  He  obsti- 
nately declined  to  see  Minto  or  to  communicate 
with  Hawkins.  Why.^^  Simply  because  the 
Examiner  had  just  then  published  an  article 
disagreeable  to  the  feelings  of — Mrs.  Lynn  Linton, 
who  had  been  a  sort  of  adopted  daughter  of 
Landor,  and  who  therefore  had  a  claim  on  Swin- 
burne's loyalty  which  destroyed  all  sense  of  what 
he  owed  to  the  Examiner  and  indeed  to  his  own 
honour.  He  persisted,  Hawkins  was  cross, 
Buchanan  won  his  case,  and  the  Examiner  had 
to  pay  £150  damages.  Nor  could  Swinburne 
ever  be  made  to  see  that  he  had  incurred  any 
blame  in  the  matter. 

A  sketch  of  Swinburne's  character  would  be 
imperfect  without  a  tribute  to  his  personal  courage. 
He  was  afraid  of  nothing,  and,  nervous  as  he  was, 
his  nervousness  never  took  the  form  of  timidity. 
When  he  was  an  elderly  man,  a  hulking  poetaster, 
half-mad  with  vanity,  who  had  endeavoured 
without  success  to  engage  Swinburne  in  a  corre- 
spondence, waited  for  him  with  a  big  stick  on 
one  of  his  lonely  walks,  and  proposed  to  give 
him  a  thrashing.  The  antagonist  was  a  powerful 
man,  his  victim  a  sort  of  fairy;  but  Swinburne 
cowed  him  by  sheer  personal  dignity,  and  serenely 
continued  to  walk  on,  with  the  blusterer  growling 
behind  him.  Watts-Dunton  was  so  much  con- 
cerned at  this  occurrence,  that  he  took  out  a 
warrant  against  the  bully,  but  Swinburne  laughed 
at  his  friend's  fears.  His  own  fearlessness,  indeed, 
often  exposed  him  to  danger  in  crossing  streets, 
in  riding,  in  swimming ;   but  his  life  was  charmed. 

Algernon  Swinburne's  character  was  essentially 


314  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

trustful  and  confiding.  He  thought  no  evil  of 
those  to  whom  he  had  granted  his  affection,  but 
he  was  subject  to  violent  and  excessive  revulsion 
of  feeling  if  he  discovered,  or  thought  that  he 
discovered,  that  his  kindness  had  been  repulsed. 
His  sentiment  for  Matthew  Arnold,  expressed 
over  and  over  again,  in  almost  hyperbolic  terms, 
received  a  rude  shock  in  1895  when  Arnold's 
Letters  were  collected  by  a  well-known  person. 
This  editor,  either  through  carelessness  or  malice, 
allowed  a  passage  to  be  printed  which  gave 
Swinburne  exquisite  annoyance.  He  had  been 
present,  in  company  with  Froude,  Browning, 
Ruskin,  Herbert  Spencer,  George  Lewes  and 
Matthew  Arnold,  at  a  dinner-party  given  by 
Monckton  Milnes  in  June  1863.  Matthew  Arnold, 
describing  this  dinner  in  a  letter  to  his  mother, 
very  innocently  mentioned  as  curiosities  "a 
Cingalese  in  full  costume,  and  a  sort  of  pseudo- 
Shelley  called  Swinburne."  That  such  a  phrase 
should  be  printed  in  the  lifetime  of  a  famous 
man-of-letters  was  inexcusable.  Swinburne  came 
upon  it  by  accident,  and  it  turned  all  his  long 
admiration  for  Arnold  to  gall  and  hatred. 

With  regard  to  Swinburne's  manner  of  work, 
it  was  modified  by  his  extreme  dislike  to  the 
physical  act  of  writing.  What  he  called  "the 
curse  of  penmanship"  weighed  heavily  upon 
him.  This  was  due  to  a  weakness  of  the  wrist 
which  began  to  show  itself  quite  early  in  life, 
and  was  at  one  time  a  little  alarming.  It 
developed,  however,  very  slowly,  and  was  at 
no  time  absolutely  serious,  but  it  made  the  act 
of   holding   a   pen   very   irksome.     The   progress 


L  ■  r~ 


Original  draft  of  Swinburne's  MS.  of  "A  Child's  Laughter' 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS     315 

of  this  weakness  may  be  traced  in  Swinburne's 
handwriting,  which  about  1862  became  so  feeble 
and  illegible  that  he  altered  his  style  of  holding 
the  pen,  his  manuscript  thereby  becoming  easier 
to  read,  but  still  more  wearisome  to  write.  The 
actual  battling  with  ink  and  paper  being  a  positive 
and  often  a  painful  effort,  Swinburne  evaded  it 
as  much  as  possible.  He  wrote  to  John  Morley 
(May  17,  1880)  :  "Copying  is  impossible  to  me; 
I  could  never  learn  the  art  of  transcription ;  and 
I  always  blunder.  I  used  always  to  think  it,  and 
I  do  now,  the  heaviest,  brutallest  and  stupidest  of 
school   punishments." 

He  gave  up  copying  his  poems,  even  for  the 
press,  and  adopted  the  habit  of  sending  to  the 
printers  his  first  rough  draft,  with  all  his  correc- 
tions and  changes.  The  result  is  that  from  the 
time  of  Chastelard  downward  few  works  of 
Swinburne's  exist  or  have  ever  existed  in  a  MS. 
duplicate.^  Swinburne  nourished  the  belief  that 
his  hatred  of  the  act  of  writing  was  shared  by 
Shakespeare,  whose  "villainous  pothooks"  he 
used  to  compare  with  his  own.  He  spoke,  not 
without  a  certain  complacency,  of  his  "exception- 
ally awful  scrawl,  almost  as  bad  as  Landor's  own 
—  the  only  point  on  which  I  can  hope  to  rival  him 
in  writing,  if  even  there  he  can  ever  be  rivalled, 
except  by  Shakespeare."  It  has  been  suggested 
to  me  by  Mr.  Wise,  who  was  unusually  familiar 
with    Swinburne's    methods,    that    his    physical 

^  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise,  who  has  made  a  close  study  of  Swinburne's  MSS., 
tells  me  that  there  are  two  copies  of  the  Song  of  Italy  and  of  a  certain  num- 
ber of  sonnets.  He  has  seen  fragments  of  a  duplicate  MS.  of  Tristram. 
But,  with  these  modifications,  he  confirms  my  general  statement  in  the 
text. 


316  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

difficulty  in  writing,  and  his  habit  of  composing, 
revising,  and  working  up  his  complete  sentence 
before  struggling  with  the  unwelcome  pen,  had 
something  to  do  with  the  artificial  and  ponderous 
character  of  his  later  prose. 


APPENDIX  I 

SWINBURNE  AT  ETON 

A   LETTER   FROM   LORD   REDESDAL^,^ 

1  Kensington  Coukts, 
May  10,  1912. 

My  dear  Gosse  —  Here  are  the  criticisms  which  suggest 

themselves  to  me  on  Mr. 's  letter  to  the  Times  about 

Swinburne's  Eton  days.     You  will  see  that  my  personal 
recollections  do  not  tally  with  his. 

Amina,  the  ghoul  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  the 
archetype  of  the  genus,  was  a  lady.  But  there  are  also 
male  ghouls  and  even  sexless  ghouls,  and  it  is  to  a  sub- 
division of  the  latter  that  a  certain  species  of  literary 
ghouls  must  be  referred.  These  batten  upon  the  fame 
of  the  illustrious  dead.  An  inspired  poet  or  prophet,  a 
prince  of  letters,  passes  away.  That  is  your  ghoul's 
opportunity.  Immediately  he  indites  a  letter  to  the 
Times  or  to  any  other  newspaper  that  will  give  him 
print,  in  a  fever  of  impatience  to  give  to  the  world 
what  he  is  pleased  to  call  his  "reminiscences."  He 
may  never  have  known  the  great  man,  he  may  have 
just  received  a  nod  from  him,  or  even  have  been  cut 
dead  —  that  is  immaterial  —  upon  the  perilous  foundation 
of  that  nod,  or  no-nod,  he  will  build  his  crazy  fabric. 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  died  in  the  spring  of 
1910.      Revelling    in    the    pleasures    of    the    imagination 

Mr. at  once  fired  off  a  letter  to  the  Times  upon  the 

subject    of    Swinburne's    Eton    days,    and    in    that    letter 
there   is  hardly  a  word    which    does    not   show  that  the 

317 


318  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

writer  knew  nothing  about  Swinburne,  and  that  his 
vaunted  friendship  with  the  poet  was  a  myth.  In  the 
first  place  Swinburne  did  not  board  at  Coleridge's  but 
at  Joynes's.  I  doubt  whether  he  ever  set  foot  in  the 
former  House,  for  he  was  a  very  stay-at-home  boy,  shy 
and    reserved  —  not    at    all    given    to    gadding    about    in 

other    houses    and    other    boys'    rooms.     Had    Mr. 

known  him  "fairly  well,"  he  must  at  least  have 
remembered  to  what  House  he  belonged.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  I  never  saw  them  speak  to  one  another.  I  was 
Swinburne's  first  cousin,  and  bound  by  ties  of  deep 
affection  and  gratitude  to  his  mother  —  my  aunt.  During 
the  first  part  of  his  stay  at  Eton,  we  were  much  together, 
and,  as  I  shall  show  presently,  very  intimate.  To  my 
sorrow  the  friendship  was  interrupted  by  circumstances 
which  unavoidably  separated  us.  There  was  no  quarrel, 
no  shadow  of  a  misunderstanding.  But  I  was  sent  into 
College,  Swinburne  remained  an  Oppidan.  Between  the 
Collegers  and  the  Oppidans  there  was  little  or  no  traffic. 

also  was  a  Colleger,  and  the  same  reason  that  parted 

Swinburne    and    me,    closely    related    as    we    were,    and 

intimate    as    we   had    been,    would    almost   preclude  

from  even  making  his  acquaintance  outside  of  the 
schoolroom.  Had  there  been  any  friendship  between 
them  it  could  hardly  have  escaped  my  knowledge.  In 
1853  I  left  College  and  became  once  more  an  Oppidan : 
but  it  was  too  late :  Swinburne  had  left  or  was  just 
leaving.  In  after  days  our  lives  lay  widely  apart. 
Only  once  did  I  meet  him  in  intimacy.  We  had  a  long 
delightful  talk,  but  it  was  a  flash  in  the  pan.  The  fates 
drove  us  asunder  again. 

Swinburne  entered  Eton  at  the  beginning  of  the 
summer  half  of  1849.  His  father,  the  Admiral,  and 
my  aunt.  Lady  Jane,  brought  him,  and  at  once  sent  for 
me  to  put  him  under  my  care.  I  was  to  "look  after 
him."  It  is  true  that  I  was  only  a  few  weeks  older  than 
himself,  and  so,  physically,  not  much  of  a  protector; 
but  I  had  already  been  three  years  at  school,   to  which 


APPENDIX   I  319 

I  was  sent  when  I  was  nine  years  old,  so  I  knew  my  Eton 
thoroughly,  and  was  well  versed  in  all  its  dear,  delightful 
ways  —  mysteries  bewildering  to  the  uninitiated.  I  was 
already  a  little  man  of  the  world,  at  any  rate  of  that 
microcosm  which  is  a  public  school,  and  so  I  was  able 
to  steer  my  small  cousin  through  some  shoals.  What  a 
fragile  little  creature  he  seemed  as  he  stood  there 
between  his  father  and  mother,  with  his  wondering  eyes 
fixed  upon  me  !  Under  his  arm  he  hugged  his  Bowdler's 
Shakespeare,  a  very  precious  treasure,  bound  in  brown 
leather  with,  for  a  marker,  a  narrow  slip  of  ribbon,  blue 
I  think,  with  a  button  of  that  most  heathenish  mar- 
queterie  called  Tunbridge  ware  dangling  from  the  end 
of  it.  He  was  strangely  tiny.  His  limbs  were  small 
and  delicate ;  and  his  sloping  shoulders  looked  far  too 
weak  to  carry  his  great  head,  the  size  of  which  was 
exaggerated  by  the  touzled  mass  of  red  hair  standing 
almost  at  right  angles  to  it.  Hero-worshippers  talk  of 
his  hair  as  having  been  a  "golden  aureole."  At  that 
time  there  was  nothing  golden  about  it.  Red,  violent, 
aggressive  red  it  was,  unmistakable,  unpoetical  carrots. 

His  features  were  small  and  beautiful,  chiselled  as 
daintily  as  those  of  some  Greek  sculptor's  masterpieces. 
His  skin  was  very  white  —  not  unhealthy,  but  a  trans- 
parent tinted  white,  such  as  one  sees  in  the  petals  of 
some  roses.  His  face  was  the  very  replica  of  that  of 
his  dear  mother,  and  she  was  one  of  the  most  refined 
and  lovely  of  women.  His  red  hair  must  have  come 
from  the  Admiral's  side,  for  I  never  heard  of  a  red- 
haired  Ashburnham.  The  Admiral  himself,  whom  I 
rarely  saw,  was,  so  well  as  my  memory  serves  me, 
already  grizzled,  but  his  hair  must  have  been  originally 
very  fair  or  even  red.  Another  characteristic  which 
Algernon  inherited  from  his  mother  was  the  voice.  All 
who  knew  him  must  remember  that  exquisitely  soft 
voice  with  a  rather  sing-song  intonation,  like  that  of 
Russians  when  they  put  the  music  of  their  own  Slav 
voices    into     the    French     language.       All     his    mother's 


320    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

brothers  and  sisters  had  it.  He  alone,  so  far  as  I  know, 
among  my  cousins  reproduced  it.  Listening  to  him 
sometimes  I  could  almost  fancy  that  I  could  hear  my 
aunt  herself  speaking,  so  startling  was  the  likeness. 
His  language,  even  at  that  age,  was  beautiful,  fanciful, 
and  richly  varied.  Altogether  my  recollection  of  him 
in  those  schooldays  is  that  of  a  fascinating,  most  lovable 
little  fellow.  It  is  but  a  child's  impression  of  another 
child.     But  I  believe  it  to  be  just. 

We  rapidly  became  friends.  Of  course,  being  in 
separate  Houses,  we  could  not  be  so  constantly  together 
as  if  we  had  both  been  in  the  same  House,  I  was  at 
Evans'  and  Durnford  was  my  tutor.  He  was  at  Joynes's 
and  of  course  Joynes  was  his  tutor.  Still  we  often  met, 
and  pretty  frequently  breakfasted  together,  he  with  me, 
or  I  with  him.  Chocolate  in  his  room,  tea  in  mine. 
The  guest  brought  his  own  "order"  of  rolls  and  butter, 
and  the  feast  was  made  rich  by  the  addition  of  sixpenny- 
worth  of  scraped  beef  or  ham  from  Joe  Groves's,  a  small 
sock-shop  which  was  almost  immediately  under  Joynes's 
House.  Little  gifts  such  as  our  humble  purses  could 
afford  cemented  our  friendship :  I  still  possess  and 
treasure  an  abbreviated  edition  of  Froissart's  Chronicles 
which  Algernon  gave  me  now,  alas !  sixty-three  years 
ago.  We  ourselves  were  abbreviated  editions  in  those 
days  ! 

It  was  at  Eton  that  he  began  to  feel  his  wings.  His 
bringing  up  at  home  had  been  scrupulously  strict.  His 
literary  diet  the  veriest  pap.  His  precocious  brain  had 
been  nourished  upon  food  for  babes.  Not  a  novel  had 
he  been  allowed  to  open,  not  even  Walter  Scott's. 
Shakespeare    he    only    knew    through    the    medium    of    his 

precious    brown    Bowdler.     's    picture    of    Swinburne 

sitting  by  the  fire  reading  poetry  is  rank  nonsense :  he 
had  not  the  books :  his  school  work  was  prepared,  as 
in  the  case  of  other  boys,  in  his  room :  his  reading  for 
pleasure  was  done  in  the  boys'  library  in  Weston's  yard. 
I    can    see    him  now  sitting  perched  up  Turk  or    tailor- 


APPENDIX   I  321 

wise  in  one  of  the  windows  looking  out  on  the  yard, 
with  some  huge  old-world  tome,  almost  as  big  as  him- 
self, upon  his  lap,  the  afternoon  sun  setting  on  fire  the 
great  mop  of  red  hair.  There  it  was  that  he  eman- 
cipated himself,  making  acquaintance  with  Shakespeare 
(minus  Bowdler),  Marlowe,  Spenser,  Ben  Jonson,  Ford, 
Massinger,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  the  other  poets 
and  playwrights  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries.  His  tendency  was  greatly  towards  the 
Drama,  especially  the  Tragic  Drama.  He  had  a  great 
sense  of  humour  in  others.  He  would  quote  Dickens, 
especially  Mrs.  Gamp,  unwearyingly ;  but  his  own 
genius  leaned  to  tragedy.  No  less  absurd  is  it  to  say 
that  as  a  boy  "he  had  an  extraordinarily  wide  know- 
ledge of  the  Greek  poets,  which  he  read  with  ease  in 
the  original."  His  study  of  the  Greek  tragedians,  upon 
whose  work  he  so  largely  modelled  his  own,  came  much 
later  in  life.  At  Eton  these  were  lessons,  and  lessons 
are  odious ;  besides,  you  cannot  take  in  vEschylus  in 
homoeopathic  doses  of  thirty  lines,  and  he  knew  no  more 
Greek  than  any  intelligent  boy  of  his  age  would  do,  nor 
did  he  take  any  prominent  place  in  the  regular  school 
work,  though  he  was  a  Prince  Consort's  prizeman  for 
modern   languages. 

His  first  love  in  literature  was  given  to  the  English 
poets,  and  after  or  together  with  these  he  devoured 
the  great  classics  of  France  and  Italy.  His  memory 
was  wonderful,  his  power  of  quotation  almost  un- 
limited. We  used  to  take  long  walks  together  in 
Windsor  Forest  and  in  the  Home  Park,  where  the 
famous  oak  of  Heme  the  Hunter  was  still  standing,  a 
white,  lightning-blasted  skeleton  of  a  tree,  a  fitting 
haunt  for  "fairies,  black,  grey,  green  and  white,"  and 
a  very  favourite  goal  of  our  expeditions.  As  he  walked 
along  with  that  peculiar  dancing  step  of  his,  his  eyes 
gleaming  with  enthusiasm,  and  his  hair,  like  the  zazzera 
of  the  old  Florentines,  tossed  about  by  the  wind,  he 
would   pour   out   in    his  unforgettable  voice    the    treasures 


322  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

which  he  had  gathered  at  his  last  sitting.  Other  boys 
would  watch  him  with  amazement,  looking  upon  him 
as  a  sort  of  inspired  elfin  —  something  belonging  to 
another  sphere.  None  dreamt  of  interfering  with  him 
—  as  for  bullying  there  was  none  of  it.  He  carried  with 
him  one  magic  charm  —  he  was  absolutely  courageous. 
He  did  not  know  what  fear  meant.  It  is  generally  the 
coward,  the  weakling  in  character,  far  more  than  the 
weakling  in  thews  and  sinews,  that  is  bullied.  Swin- 
burne's pluck  as  a  boy  always  reminds  me  of  Kinglake's 
description  in  Eofhen  of  Dr.  Keate,  the  famous  head 
master  of  Eton:  "He  was  little  more  (if  more  at  all) 
than  five  feet  in  height,  and  was  not  very  great  in 
girth,  but  within  this  space  was  concentrated  the 
pluck  of  ten  battalions."  That  was  Swinburne  all  over, 
and  puny  as  he  was,  I  verily  believe,  that  had  any  boy, 
however  big,  attempted  to  bully  him,  that  boy  would 
have  caught  a  Tartar.  Of  games  he  took  no  heed ; 
I  do  not  think  that  he  ever  possessed  a  cricket  bat, 
but  of  walking  and  swimming  he  never  tired.  And  so 
he  led  a  sort  of  charmed  life  —  a  fairy  child  in  the  midst 
of  a  commonplace,  workaday  world.  As  Horace  said  of 
himself,  "Non  sine  Dis  animosus  infans." 

As   for   the   fabulous   race   to   Pote   Williams'    shop   for 

the  first  copy  of  Maud  in  1855,  which  Mr. "believes" 

he  won,  it  is  enough  to  say  that  as  Swinburne  left  Eton 
in  1853,  it  must  have  taken  place  in  dreamland.  Upon 
that  subject  the  letter  of  Mr.  Cornish,  which  appeared 
in  the  same  day's  Times  as  that  of  Mr. ,  is  authorita- 
tive   and    incontrovertible.     Poor    Mr. !     How    little 

he  thought  that  the  same  column  of  the  Times  would 
contain  his  invention  and  its  contradiction :  the  poison 
and  the  antidote. 

One  more  trait  which  you  may  like  to  find  room  for. 
I  have  told  you  about  his  courage.  He  was  no  horse- 
man and  had  no  opportunity  at  home  for  riding.  But 
in  the  matter  of  horses  he  was  absolutely  without  terror. 
He,    unskilled    though    he    was,    would    ride    anything    as 


APPENDIX   I  323 

fearless  as  a  Centaur.  Rides  with  his  cousin,  Lady 
Katherine  Ashburnhani  (afterwards  Bannermann),  were 
among  his  great  deUghts  in  that  glorious  forest-like  country 
above  Ashburnham  Place. 

There  is  no  truth  in  the  story,  how  coined  I  know  not, 

that    Swinburne    disliked    Eton.     There    Mr. is,    as 

an  exception,  correct.  The  poet  was  not  made  of  the 
stuff  which  moulds  the  enthusiastic  schoolboy,  and  I 
much  doubt  whether  any  school  would,  as  such,  have 
appealed  to  him.  But  Eton  stands  by  itself.  Its  old 
traditions  and  its  chivalrous  memories,  its  glorious  sur- 
roundings, meant  for  him  something  more  than  mere 
school :  he  looked  back  upon  the  grey  towers,  Windsor, 
the  Forest,  the  Brocas,  the  Thames,  Cuckoo  Weir  — 
with  an  affection  which  inspired  his  commemoration 
ode,  and  which,  I  believe,  never  left  him.  The  place 
touched  his  poet's  soul  as  no  other  school  could  have  done, 
and  so  it  fitted  him. 

Believe  me  to  be,  my  dear  Gosse,  yours  sincerely, 

Redesdale. 


APPENDIX  II 
PAULINE,   LADY  TREVELYAN 

LETTER   FROM   SIR   GEORGE   OTTO   TREVELYAN,    BART. 

Walmngton,  June  8,  1916. 

Dear  Edmund  Gosse  —  Pauline,  Lady  Trevelyan, 
was  a  woman  of  singular  and  unique  charm;  quiet  and 
quaint  in  manner,  nobly  emotional,  ingrainedly  artistic, 
very  wise  and  sensible,  with  an  ever-flowing  spring  of 
the  most  delicious  humour.  No  friend  of  hers,  man  or 
woman,  could  ever  have  enough  of  her  company ;  and 
those  friends  were  many,  and  included  the  first  people 
of  the  day  in  every  province  of  distinction. 

She  was  Algernon  Swinburne's  good  angel ;  and  (to 
quote  one  of  his  letters)  he  regarded  her  with  "filial 
feelings."  It  was  a  very  real  and  permanent  misfortune 
for  him  that  Pauline  Trevelyan  died  in  middle  life  in 
the  summer  of  1866;  and  sad  it  was  for  me,  too,  since 
she  was  a  second  mother  to  me,  who  was  so  rich  in  that 
blessing  already.  Widely  and  almost  absurdly  different 
as  we  two  young  men  were,  Pauline  Trevelyan  was 
catholic  enough  to  be  in  sympathy  wnth  both  of  us. 

Algernon  Swinburne  and  I  had  not  a  taste,  or  a 
pursuit,  in  common.  The  books,  and  the  men,  that  he 
loved  and  admired  when  he  was  a  youth  of  twenty  years 
old,  are  known  to  the  world  through  the  medium  of 
his  exquisite  literature.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  never 
tired  of  reading,  and  talking  about,  Thackeray,  and 
Tristram    Shandy,     and    Albert     Smith's     and    Theodore 

324 


APPENDIX   II  325 

Hook's  novels,  and  (I  must  in  fairness  say)  about 
Aristophanes  and  Juvenal.  No  author  then  existed 
for  me  who  was  not  a  favourite  with  Macaulay ;  and, 
though  that  gave  me  a  large  field  of  choice,  it  must  be 
allowed  that  Macaulay 's  reading  did  not  lie  along  the 
same  lines  as  that  of  Gabriel  Rossetti's  circle.  More- 
over, I  was  always  eager  to  be  after  the  blackcock  and 
partridges,  although  I  shot  much  less  well  than  Algernon 
Swinburne  wrote  poetry. 

There  was  no  liking,  or  disliking,  between  us ;  but 
the  plain  fact  is  that  we  were  not  to  each  other's  purpose. 
Each  went  his  own  way;  and  joyous  ways  they  were. 
Not  only  can  I  remember  nothing  that  he  ever  said  to 
me,  but  I  cannot  even  recall  our  having  walked,  or 
conversed,  together.  I  regarded  him  with  awe,  and 
some  apprehension,  as  one  who  could  write  French 
ballades,  and  who  seemed  to  know  all  about  King 
Arthur's  Court ;  and  I  have  no  doubt  whatever  that  he 
regarded  me  as  coming  straight  from  Gath. 

My  sole  recollection  is  of  hearing  him,  more  than 
once,  reciting  poetry  to  the  ladies  in  the  Italian  saloon 
at  Wallington.  He  sat  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  with 
one  foot  curled  up  on  the  seat  of  the  chair  beneath  him, 
declaiming  verse  with  a  very  different  intonation  and 
emphasis  from  that  with  which  our  set  of  young  Cantabs 
read  Byron  and  Keats  to  each  other  in  our  college 
rooms,  at  Trinity.  That  is  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  what  I  have  to  tell.  Towards  the  close  of  a  very 
long  life  my  keenest  and  most  genuine  regrets  are  con- 
nected with  my  wasted  opportunities  for  gaining  a  real 
and  vivid  knowledge  of  famous  people  who  have  passed 
away,  —  Ever  yours  sincerely, 

George  Otto  Trevelyan. 

It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  Pauline's  influence 
over  people.  Ruskin  and  the  second  Lady  Ashburton, 
in  their  way  the  most  masterful  people  I  ever  knew,  treated 
me  on  her  account  with  an  extraordinary  kindness.     When 


326    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

Lady  Ashburton  was  the  most  splendid  and  noble  unmarried 
woman,  in  great  request,  she  would  stay  six  weeks  at  a  time 
at  Wallington. 

Shortly  before  Pauline  died,  Sir  Walter  built  her  a 
villa  on  the  coast  near  Seaton,  in  Dorsetshire,  as  a 
dower-house  in  case  of  his  death.  Lady  Ashburton 
immediately  bought  the  next  plot  of  land,  and  hurriedly 
built  a  fine  villa  next  door.  Then  Pauline  died ;  and 
I  doubt  much  whether  Lady  Ashburton  lived  there 
afterwards.     But  of  that  I  am  not  sure. 


APPENDIX  III 

SWINBURNE  AND   MALLARME 

LETTER   FROM   MR.   GEORGE   MOORE 

121  Ebury  Street,  S.  W. 
2nd  December,  1912. 

My  dear  Gosse  —  You  say  you  have  been  waiting 
a  whole  week  for  the  Mallarme-Swinburne  note,  and 
that  you  want  it  instantly.  Well,  my  dear  friend,  you 
can  have  it  instantly,  but  I  am  afraid  you  will  be  dis- 
appointed. Anecdotes  of  the  kind  are  well  enough  in 
conversation,  but  when  we  take  up  the  pen  to  transcribe 
them,  they  seem  slightly  too  slight  for  transcription. 
But  since  you  must  have  it,  here  goes  ! 

One  night  at  Mallarme's  —  he  received  on  Tuesday 
night,  but  in  the  'seventies  he  was  not  a  celebrity  and 
very  few  came  to  his  receptions ;  I  think  we  generally 
spent  Tuesday  night  together,  tete-a-tete.  One  night 
the  conversation  turned  on  Swinburne,  and  he  showed 
me  a  long  correspondence,  written  on  sheets  of  blue 
foolscap  paper,  in  a  shaky  handwriting,  about  the  poem 
which  Swinburne  was  asked  to  contribute,  and  which 
he  did  contribute  to  La  Republiqiie  des  Lettres,  "Une 
Nocturne,"  a  sestina  written  in  French.  Swinburne 
had  asked  Mallarme  to  alter  anything  that  seemed  to 
him  to  need  alteration,  and  Mallarme  consequently 
altered  the  second  line  of  the  poem,  and  the  alteration 
drew  from  Swinburne  at  least  three  voluminous 
epistles.  Other  alterations  were  made  by  Swinburne 
at    Mallarme's    suggestion;     these    I    do    not    remember, 

327 


328  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

but  Mallarme's  I  remember  quite  well.  Swinburne 
wrote : 

La  nuit  ecoute  et  se  penche  sur  Tonde 
Pour  recueillir  rien  qu^un  soufHe  d'amour. 

''Pour  recueillir  rien"  did  not  sound  agreeable  to 
Mallarme's  French  ear,  and  his  alteration  of  the  line 
shows  exquisite  taste.  He  altered  the  line  to  "pour  y 
cueillir  rien,"  etc.  Swinburne  discussed  the  alteration 
with  Mallarme,  maintaining  that  his  reason  for  using 
recueillir  was  that  it  seemed  to  him  that  cueillir  would 
be  more  properly  applied  to  apples  and  pears  than  to  a 
breath  of  love.  Whether  the  verse  appeared  in  La  Re- 
publique  des  Lettres  as  corrected  by  Mallarme  or  in 
its  original  form  I  do  not  know,  but  in  the  volume  you 
will  find  Mallarme's  correction. 

There  was  another  line  later  on,  in  the  last  stanza 
but  one  I  think,  of  which  we  could  make  nothing.  The 
first  word  seemed  to  us  like  Vorme,  and  Mallarme  asked 
me  if  there  was  any  word  in  English  like  Vorme.  He 
could  think  of  nothing  in  French  except  the  elm,  and 
the  elm  of  course  did  not  come  into  the  sentence. 
In  a  subsequent  letter  Swinburne  sent  half  a  dozen 
versions  for  Mallarme  to  select  from.  I  think  the  line 
now  reads : 

"Le  sang  du  beau  pied  blesse  de  I'amour." 

One  phrase  in  the  letters  I  remember.  He  had 
heard  that  some  French  writer  had  said,  speaking  of 
his  (Swinburne's)  French  verses,  that  they  were  les 
efforts  giants  d\m  barbare.  This  phrase  inspired  many 
grand  rolling  sentences.  He  was  unwilling  as  unable 
to  accept  the  praise  implied  by  the  word  giant,  for  his 
verses  in  French  were  those  of  a  barbarian,  etc.  Though 
he  knew  of  course  that  the  word  was  used  in  the  Greek 
sense,  still  it  was  not  a  foreigner's  verses  that  he  wished 
to  send,  etc.  I  wish  I  could  remember  the  torrent  of 
words  that  he  poured  forth  on  this  subject.  You  must 
get    the    letters.     Of    course    ses    vers    sont   des    vers    d'un 


APPENDIX   III  329 

barbare.  What  else  could  they  be?  And  if  I  may  be 
allowed  to  carry  the  Frenchman's  criticism  a  little 
further  I  will  say  that  they  seem  to  me  to  be  French 
verses  written  by  a  man  who  could  not  speak  French. 
I  cannot  help  thinking  that  his  French  verses  wear  the 
same  sort  of  deadly  pallor  that  the  Latin  of  a  mediaeval 
poet  would  wear  if  a  great  poet  had  written  in  the 
Middle  Ages. 

I  never  saw  Swinburne  but  once,  and  I  cannot 
remember  whether  it  was  before  or  after  the  publication 
of  the  sestina.  We  were  all  carried  away  on  the  hurri- 
cane winds  of  Swinburne's  verses  in  the  'seventies,  and 
I  think  it  was  the  ambition  of  everybody  who  wrote 
verses  to  see  the  poet.  Rossetti,  William  Michael  it 
must  have  been,  told  me  that  all  I  had  to  do  was  to 
go  and  present  myself  and  that  I  should  find  Swinburne 
very  agreeable  and  pleased  to  see  me.  It  was  William 
Michael  who  gave  me  the  address.  As  well  as  I  can 
recollect  he  said  Bedford  Row.  You  tell  me  that  he 
lived  in  Great  James  Street,  which  is  near  Bedford 
Row ;  that  may  be  so,  no  doubt  is  so.  I  remember 
that  one  entered  the  house  by  an  open  doorway,  as  in 
the  Temple,  and  that  I  went  upstairs,  and  on  the  first 
floor  began  to  wonder  on  which  Swinburne  lived; 
thinking  to  see  a  clerk  engaged  in  copying  entries  into 
a  ledger  I  opened  a  door  and  found  myself  in  a  large 
room  in  which  there  was  no  furniture  except  a  truckle 
bed.  Outside  the  sheets  lay  a  naked  man,  a  strange, 
impish  little  body  it  was,  and  about  the  head,  too  large 
for  the  body,  was  a  great  growth  of  red  hair.  The 
fright  that  this  naked  man  caused  me  is  as  vivid  in  me 
to-day  as  if  it  had  only  occurred  yesterday,  possibly 
more  vivid.  I  had  gone  to  see  Swinburne,  expecting 
to  find  a  man  seated  in  an  arm-chair  reading  a  book, 
one  who  would  probably  ask  me  if  I  smoked  cigarettes 
or  cigars,  and  who  would  talk  to  me  about  Shelley.  I 
had  no  idea  what  Swinburne's  appearance  was  like, 
but   there    was    no    doubt    in    my    mind    that   the   naked 


330    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

man  was  Swinburne.  How  I  knew  it  to  be  Swinburne 
I  cannot  tell.  I  felt  that  there  could  be  nobody  but 
Swinburne  who  would  look  like  that,  and  he  looked  to 
me  like  a  dreadful  caricature  of  myself.  The  likeness 
was  remarkable,  at  first  sight;  if  you  looked  twice  I 
am  sure  it  disappeared.  We  were  both  very  thin,  our 
hair  was  the  same  colour,  flaming  red ;  Swinburne  had 
a  very  high  forehead  and  I  had  a  very  high  forehead, 
and  we  both  had  long  noses,  and  though  I  have  a  little 
more  chin  than  Swinburne,  mine  is  not  a  prominent 
chin.  It  seemed  to  me  that  at  the  end  of  a  ball,  coming 
downstairs  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  I  had  often 
looked  like  the  man  on  the  bed,  and  the  idea  of  sitting 
next  to  that  naked  man,  so  very  like  myself,  and  explain- 
ing to  him  that  I  had  come  from  William  Michael 
Rossetti  frightened  me  nearly  out  of  my  wits.  I  just 
managed  to  babble  out,  "Does  Mr.  Jones  live  here.'*" 
The  red  head  shook  on  a  long  thin  neck  like  a  tulip, 
and  I  heard,  "Will  you  ask  downstairs?"  I  fled  and 
jumped  into  a  hansom,  and  never  heard  of  Swinburne 
again  until  he  wrote  to  Philip  Bourke  Marston  a 
letter  about  A  Mummer's  Wife  which  Philip  Bourke 
Marston  had  sent  him.  Of  that  letter  I  remember  a 
phrase :  "  It  was  not  with  a  chamber  pot  for  buckler 
and  a  spit  for  a  spear  that  I  charged  the  Philistines." 
He  afterwards  wrote  to  me  explaining  away  this  letter 
which  did  not  annoy  me  in  the  least.  The  absurd 
epithets  that  he  piled  up  in  his  prose  could  not  annoy 
anybody;  they  merely  amused  me.  He  wrote  the  worst 
prose  every  written  by  a  great  poet. 

Now,  my  dear  Gosse,  I  have  sent  you  the  note  which 
you  asked  for.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  without  any  interest, 
but  that  is  not  my  affair,  it  is  yours.  It  may,  however, 
induce  you  to  go  to  Paris  and  try  to  persuade  Mallarme's 
daughter  to  give  you  copies  of  Swinburne's  letters  to 
her  father;  or  if  you  like  I  will  go  there  as  a  missionary 
on  your  behalf.  —  Very  sincerely  yours, 

George  Moore. 


APPENDIX  IV 

SWINBURNE'S  POSTHUMOUS  WRITINGS 

When  Swinburne  died,  he  left  no  directions,  verbal  or 
testamentary,  with  regard  to  the  publication  of  any 
MSS.  which  might  be  found  among  his  papers.  Some 
final  reflections  on  Shakespeare,  written  in  1905,  although 
not  published  by  the  Oxford  University  Press  until 
1909,  had  been  arranged  for  by  their  author  some  time 
before  his  fatal  illness.  Watts-Dunton  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  either  the  genesis  or  completion 
of  this  book,  which  was  composed  in  response  to  a 
request  from  the  publishers,  and  was  delivered  to  the 
press  many  months  before  its  posthumous  appearance. 
The  publishers  held  it  back,  until  the  poet's  death  in- 
cited them  to  a  hasty  publication.  But  Watts-Dunton 
discovered  various  writings,  both  in  verse  and  prose, 
several  of  which  were  essentially  more  important  than 
the  little  treatise  on  Shakespeare.  All  were  found  at 
The  Pines,  although  in  different  places.  They  belong 
to  widely  different  epochs  in  the  poet's  life ;  some,  no 
doubt,  had  been  rejected  by  him,  and  yet  preserved, 
perhaps  with  some  lingering  idea  of  future  adaptation  or 
resuscitation. 

Soon  after  Swinburne's  death,  Watts-Dunton  consulted 
Mr.  Thomas  J.  Wise,  whose  Swinburne  collection  is  the 
finest  in  existence,  as  to  the  best  manner  of  preserving 
the  unpublished  MSS.,  until  the  time  should  be  ripe  for 
their  regular  publication  in  suitable  collected  volumes. 
It  was  decided  that  it  would  be  a  pity  to  disperse  them 
in    magazines,    while    at    the    same    time    it    was    highly 

331 


332  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

desirable  to  preserve  them  in  type,  the  more  so  as  all 
the  originals  presently  passed  out  of  Watts-Dunton's 
possession,  into  that  of  Mr.  Wise,  who  purchased  from 
Watts-Dun  ton  both  the  MSS.  and  the  copyrights  of 
them.  The  result  of  the  discussion  was  that  Mr.  Wise, 
in  collaboration  with  Watts-Dunton,  proceeded  to  print, 
in  an  extremely  limited  issue,  a  series  of  posthumous 
Swinburne  pamphlets,  these  pamphlets  being  provided, 
when  it  was  necessary,  with  introductions  signed  by 
Watts-Dunton  or  by  myself.  It  was  recognised  both 
by  Mr.  Wise  and  Watts-Dunton  that  this  mode  of 
permanent  preservation  of  the  scattered  remnants  of 
the  poet's  work  would  have  appealed  strongly  to 
Swinburne  himself,  who  avowed  himself  to  be  "a  bit 
of  a  bibliomaniac,"  and  who  on  many  occasions  was 
eager  to  embrace  the  opportunity  of  circulating  particular 
poems  in  that  limited  pamphlet-form  which  appeals  to 
the  lover  of  rare  books.  With  the  advance  of  years, 
Watts-Dunton  found  the  task  of  reading  Swinburne's 
crabbed  handwriting  increasingly  painful,  and  in  fact 
the  text  of  the  whole  of  the  unpublished  writings  was 
deciphered  by  Mr.  Wise,  with  my  help. 

After  the  unpublished  compositions  had  been  satis- 
factorily disposed  of,  the  question  had  to  be  considered 
of  what  should  be  done  with  the  very  numerous  articles 
and  letters  to  the  Press,  printed  by  Swinburne  in 
magazines  and  newspapers,  but  not  yet  collected.  A 
similar  plan  was  adopted.  Mr.  Wise  collected  the 
scattered  writings,  I  furnished  the  necessary  critical 
introductions,  and  under  Watts-Dunton's  sympathetic 
auspices,  these  also  were  privately  printed  in  a  suitable 
and  uniform  shape.  It  was  Mr.  Wise's  intention,  in 
collaboration  with  Watts-Dunton,  who  had  promised  his 
assistance,  to  make  from  these  articles  such  judicious 
selections  as  might  be  given  to  a  wider  public,  but  death 
removed  Watts-Dunton  before  the  project  had  been 
carried,  out.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  selections  had 
alreadflbeen  completed  by  Mr.  Wise,  and  only  awaited 


APPENDIX   IV  333 

Watts-Dun  ton's  introductions.  The  only  uncollected 
articles  not  included  in  these  private  booklets  are 
the  short  monographs  upon  some  of  the  Elizabethan 
Dramatists  which  Swinburne  intended  to  use  in  a  Second 
Series  of  The  Age  of  Shakespeare.  These  have  been 
arranged  by  Mr.  Wise,  who  had  purchased  the  MSS. 
from  Watts-Dunton,  and  the  volume  is  ready  for  press. 

It  now  remains  for  me  to  describe  the  most  important  of 
the  posthumous  MSS. 

PRIVATELY  PRINTED  VERSE 

1.  Ode  to  Mazzini,  pp.  22,  1909,  4to. 

2.  In  the  Twilight,  pp.  13,  1909,  8vo. 

3.  Lord  Soulis,  pp.  21,  1909,  8vo. 

4.  Lord  Scales,  pp.  16,  1909,  8vo. 

5.  Border  Ballads,  pp.  21,  1909,  Svo. 

6.  Burd  Margaret,  pp.  15,  1909,  Svo. 

7.  The  Worm  of  Spindlestonheugh,  pp.  21,  1909,  Svo. 

8.  Lady  Maisie's  Bairn  and  other  Poems,  pp.  41,  1915, 

Svo. 

9.  The  Triumph  of  Gloriana,  pp.  16,  1916,  Svo. 

10.   The  Death  of  Sir  John  Franklin,  pp.  21,  1916,  Svo. 

In  our  opinion  the  most  valuable  portion  of  the 
hitherto  unpublished  work  of  Swinburne  in  verse  consists 
of  the  Border  Ballads,  which  were  found  by  Watts-Dunton 
among  the  poet's  papers.  No  fewer  than  eight  of  these 
ballads,  all  lengthy  and  all  highly  finished,  were  dis- 
covered at  different  times,  and  were  submitted  to  us  to 
be  deciphered.  The  opinion  of  Watts-Dunton  was  that 
others  had  existed,  but  that  "many  were  destroyed." 

PRIVATELY  PRINTED  PROSE 

1.  The  Portrait,  pp.  19,  1909,  Svo. 

2.  The  Marriage  of  Monna  Lisa,  pp.  16,  1909,  Svo. 

3.  The  Chronicle  of  Queen  Fredegond,  pp.  74,  1909,  Svo. 

4.  M.  Prudhomme  at  the  International  Exhibition,  pp. 

25,  1909,  Svo. 

5.  Of  Liberty  and  Loyalty,  pp.  21,  1909,  Svo. 


334     ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 

6.  A  Record  of  Friendship,  pp.  9,  1910,  8vo. 

7.  A  Criminal  Case,  pp.  15,  1910,  8vo. 

8.  Thomas  Nabbes,  pp.  14,  1914,  8vo. 

9.  Christopher  Marlowe  in  relation  to  Greene,  Peele,  and 

Lodge,  pp.  21,  1914,  8vo. 

10.  Felicien  Cossu.     A  burlesque,  pp.  32,  1915,  8vo. 

11.  Theophile,  pp.  35,  1915,  8vo. 

12.  Ernest  Clouet,  pp.  21,  1916,  8vo. 

13.  A  Vision  of  Bags,  pp.  12,  1916,  8vo. 

One  of  the  projects  of  his  youth  which  Swinburne 
most  reluctantly  abandoned,  if  he  ever  abandoned  it  at 
all,  was  the  composition  of  a  cycle  of  prose  stories  of 
passion,  which  should  be  tied  together,  in  the  old  Italian 
manner,  by  some  gracious  fable  of  friends,  met  in  an  idle 
mood  at  farmstead  or  forest  palace,  who  tell  one  another 
romantic  stories  of  their  adventures  in  love  and  war.  The 
whole  was  to  be  called  the  Triameron,  and  the  contents  of 
two  days  were  actually  planned  and  largely  composed. 
The  following  list,  written  probably  in  1861,  was  found 
among  his  papers,  written  out  on  the  back  of  a  stray  leaf 
of  the  draft  copy  of  Chastelard : 

First  Day.  Second  Day. 

The  Two  Kisses.  Lescombat. 

The  Portrait.  Mistress  Sanders. 

Dead  Love.  Accorambuoni. 

Dream  of  a  Murder.  Sans  Merci  (betrays  lover  to 

Talking  in  Sleep.  husband). 

A  Man  loved  by  a  Witch.  A    Chateaubrun    of    Rococo 

The  Story  of  Queen  Frede-  period. 

gonde.  A   Friend   of   Madame   Du- 

The  Feast  of  Ladies.  barry's. 

A  Lover  of  Brinvilliers.  Bogey. 

The  Case  of  Rene  Aubryat.  Romance. 

Bianca  Capello. 

Of  all  these  stories  one  only  has  hitherto  been  known 
to  the  world,  if  indeed  it  can  be  said  to  be  known.     This 


APPENDIX   IV  335 

is  Dead  Love,  which,  at  the  introduction  of  George 
Meredith,  was  printed  in  Once  a  Week,  in  October  1862, 
and  afterwards  by  Swinburne  himself  as  a  pamphlet, 
which  has  never  been  reprinted,  in  1864,  More  about 
the  Triameron  will  possibly  be  divulged,  when  the  poet's 
early  correspondence  is  examined.  At  present  we  know 
of  the  existence  of  five  of  the  stories  mentioned  in 
the  list.  The  Marriage  of  Monna  Lisa,  which  Mr,  Wise 
privately  printed  in  1909,  is  certainly  one  of  these,  under 
a  different  title. 

VERSE   NOW  FIRST   COLLECTED 

The  Ballade  of  Truthful  Charles,  and  other  Poems,  pp.  32, 
1910,  8vo. 

yEolus,  pp.  13,  1914,  8vo. 

These  had  already  appeared  in  Magazines  but  re- 
mained uncollected  at  the  date  of  the  poet's  death. 

PROSE   NOW  FIRST   COLLECTED 

The  Saviour  of  Society.  Two  Sonnets  and  a  Controversy, 
pp.  34,  1909,  8vo. 

Letters  to  the  Press,  pp.  114,  1912,  Svo. 

"Les  Fleurs  du  Mai,"  and  other  Studies,  pp.  95,  1913, 
Svo. 

"Les  Miserables,"  pp.  51,  1914,  8vo. 

Pericles,  and  other  Studies,  pp.  83,  1914,  Svo. 

The  five  articles  on  Les  Miserables  of  Victor  Hugo  and 
the  long  study  of  Baudelaire,  appeared  anonymously  in  the 
Spectator  in  1862. 

Finally,  Watts-Dunton  arranged  with  Mr.  Wise  that 
the  latter  should  collect  such  portions  of  Swinburne's 
correspondence  as  were  available,  and  should  protect 
these  by  issuing  them  in  limited  editions,  preparatory 
to  the  arrangement  of  the  whole  for  general  publication. 
This  was  done  in  nineteen  pamphlets  between  1909 
and    1915.     Of    these    letters    such    a    selection    as    would 


336  ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

appeal  to  the  wide  literary  public  will  in  due  time  be 
published.  Swinburne  was  not  a  voluminous  letter- 
writer,  but  he  never  wrote  without  having  something 
to  say,  and  it  is  difficult  to  take  up  his  briefest  note  with- 
out finding  some  element  of  interest  in  it.  At  his  best, 
Swinburne  will  be  admitted  to  high  rank  among  purely 
literary  letter- writers. 


NOTE 

Some  additional  information  regarding  Swinburne's  early- 
youth  has  reached  me  too  late  for  insertion  in  the  body  of 
this  volume.  In  each  case,  though  by  a  coincidence,  the 
Sewell  family  is  involved. 

Page  27 
Immediately  after  leaving  Eton,  Swinburne  met,  at  the 
house  of  Miss  Elizabeth  Sewell  and  her  sisters,  AshcUffe, 
Bonchurch,  an  Italian  lady  who  was  staying  in  the  Isle  of 
Wight.  This  was  Signora  Annunziata  Fronduti,  who  still 
survives  in  her  eighty-fifth  year,  and  who  now  resides  at 
Gubbio,  in  Umbria.  Miss  Fronduti  was  greatly  impressed 
by  the  simplicity  of  the  boy,  whose  "great  shock  of  red  hair, 
fits  of  silence,  and  earnest  gaucherie"  she  still  vividly  recalls. 
She  discovered  that  he  had  a  passion  for  Itahan  poetry,  and 
she  exercised  for  his  benefit  her  practised  gifts  of  reading  and 
recitation.  He  would  "make  her  do  it  by  the  hour,"  and 
would  sit  gazing  into  space,  absolutely  transfigured  and 
absorbed  by  the  magic  and  the  music  of  the  classic  Italian 
verse.  Signora  Fronduti  remembers  that  on  these  occasions 
his  great  eyes  were  filled  with  a  sort  of  devouring  flame  — 
"for  the  poetry,  not  the  reciter,"  as  she  naively  protests. 
It  seems  to  have  been  Dante  that  she  chiefly  read  to  him, 
as  Ariosto  had  already  been  introduced  to  him  by  Lady 
Jane  Swinburne.  Signora  Annunziata  Fronduti  was  a  friend 
of  Lord  Houghton,  and  it  is  possible  that  it  was  she  who, 
in  1860,  made  Algernon  known  to  him.  I  have  to  thank 
Miss  Janet  H.  Blunt  for  having  kindly  made  this  communi- 
cation to  me. 

Page  34 

Some  light  is  thrown  on  Swinburne's  religious  convictions 
as  an  undergraduate  by  reminiscences  very  obligingly  trans- 
mitted to  me  by  Mr.  Walter  Bradford  Woodgate,  who  was 
educated  at  St.  Peter's  College,  Radley,  near  Oxford,  from 
1850  to  1858.     The  Warden  of  Radley  was  William  Sewell 

337 


338    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

(1804-1874)  of  Exeter  College,  the  brother  of  Miss  Elizabeth 
Sewell.  William  Sewell  dispensed  a  rather  lavish  hospitality 
at  Radley,  and  Mr.  Woodgate  recalls  several  visits  paid 
there  by  Algernon,  especially  one  which  lasted  some  weeks, 
and  probably  took  place  during  the  Long  Vacation  of  1856. 
He  ate  at  "high  table"  with  the  masters,  but  "he  mostly 
associated  with  us  boys,  and  was  elected  honorary  member 
of  the  prefects'  common  room."  There  can  be  no  question 
that  it  was  the  wish  of  his  family  that,  through  the  intro- 
du<ition  of  Miss  Elizabeth  Sewell,  the  high-church  principles 
which  had  been  so  carefully  instilled  into  Algernon  at  Bon- 
church  should  be  supported  at  Radley.  But  Mr.  Woodgate 
remembers  him  only  as  devoted  to  literature;  "he  did  not 
go  in  for  games,  but  was  enthusiastic  about  poetry."  On 
one  occasion,  at  the  School  Debating  Society,  one  of  the  older 
boys  propounded  as  the  subject  of  debate  a  condemnation  of 
Tennyson's  Maud,  which  had  recently  (1855)  been  published, 
and  which  had  been  received  by  the  public  with  a  strange 
outburst  of  critical  misapprehension.  The  speaker  declared 
that  this  poem  "detracted  from  Tennyson's  reputation." 
Algernon  Swinburne,  who  had  just  read  Maud  with  ecstasy, 
was  extremely  indignant.  Before  the  debate  began,  he 
heartily  ridiculed  the  proposed  censure  in  a  conversation  in 
prefects'  room,  and  when  the  discussion  was  about  to  begin, 
he  jumped  up,  and  crying  out,  "You're  a  lot  of  PhiHstines," 
bounced  out  of  the  room.  After  " this  insult  to  true  poetry" 
he  refused  to  attend  the  meetings  of  the  society. 

On  the  next  occasion,  however,  when  the  poet's  visit  was 
expected,  Sewell  informed  the  Sixth  Form  that  he  should 
not  in  future  be  able  to  allow  Algernon  Swinburne  to  come 
to  Radley.  The  Warden  said  that  he  had  felt  himself  forced 
to  cancel  the  general  invitation  to  him  to  come  over  from 
Oxford  on  Sundays  for  the  day.  He  said  that  the  reason  was 
that  Swinburne  had  contracted  "theories  of  free-think- 
ing in  religion"  which  were  diametrically  opposed  to  the 
views  of  his  family  and  shocking  to  Sewell  himself,  who 
insisted  on  High  Anglican  ceremonial  at  Radley.  Sewell 
told  the  Sixth  Form  that  he  feared  lest  Swinburne  might 
"inoculate  boys  with  his  sinister  tenets."  This  was,  doubt- 
less, at  the  end  of  1856  or  beginning  of  1857,  soon  after 
Mr.  Woodgate  was  made  a  prefect. 


INDEX 


The  initials  A.C.S.  in  this  index  represent  the  subject  of  the  biography. 


Aberystwith,  A.C.S.  at,  158 

Acland,  Sir  Henry,  50-1 

Aeon  and  Rhodope  (Landor),  21 

Adams,  C,  on  A.C.S.'s  bird-like 
appearance  in  1862, 
286 

Adieux  a  Marie  Stuart,  verses  by 
A.C.S.,  124-5,  257 

Adonais  (Shelley),  167 

^olus,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  335 

.^schylus,  109;  A.C.S.'s  know- 
ledge of,  110,  and  study 
of,  206 

Age,  The,  of  Shakespeare,  un- 
finished book,  by 
A.C.S.,  223,  333 

Aholibak,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  prob- 
able date  of,  144  n. 

Ainger,  Canon,  275 

Airlie,  Blanche,  Countess  of,  203 

Alaham  (Greville),  270  &  n. 

Albigenses,  A.C.S.'s  planned  poem 
on,  56-7 

Alison,  Dr.,  170 

American  Editions  of  Poems  and 
Ballads,  162 

Amours,  Les,  d"  Hippolyte  (Des- 
portes),  130 

Anactoria,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  137, 
155 

Angel  in  the  House  (Patmore),  131 

Appeal  to  England,  pamphlet  by 
A.C.S.,  174,  175,  291 

Arden  of  Feversham,  290,  298 

Ariosto's  poems  early  known  to 
A.C.S.,  337 

Armada,  The,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  273 

Army  life,  A.C.S.'s  desire  for, 
28-9 

Arnold,  Matthew,  A.C.S.'s  com- 
pliment to,  143;  article 
on,  by  A.C.S.,  53; 
phrase  used  by,  on 
A.C.S.,     314 ;      lectures 


Arnold  —  continued 

by,  on  Poetry,  effect 
of,  108;  Literature  and 
Dogma,  by,  effect  of, 
on  A.C.S.,  309-10; 
Oxford  Poems  by,  36, 
135,  167;  prose  writ- 
ings of,  135 ;  Taine's 
opinion  on,  202;  Tris- 
tram and  Iseult,  poem 
by,  260 

Art,  L\  d'etre  grand-pere  (Hugo), 
effect  of,  on  A.C.S.,  304 

Arts  Club,  140,  198-9 

Arundell  family,  121-2 

Ashburnham  family,  character- 
istics of,  1,  4,  307 

Ashburnham,  4th  Earl  of,  uncle  of 
A.C.S. ;  value  of  his 
library  to  the  poet,  80 

Ashburnham,  Earls  of,  4 

Ashburnham,  Lady  Jane  Henri- 
etta, see  under  Swin- 
burne 

Ashburnham,  Lady  Katherine, 
cousin  of  A.C.S.,  22,  323 

Ashburnham,  General  the  Hon. 
Thomas,  uncle  of 
A.C.S.,  32 

Ashburnham  Place,  Battle,  A.C.S.'s 
visits  to,  80,  and  be- 
haviour at,  199 

Ashburton,  Ladv,  and  Pauline, 
Lady  ^Trevelyan,   325-6 

Ashcliffe,  Bonchurch,  A.C.S.  at, 
337 

Ashfield  House,  West  Malvern, 
A.C.S.  at,  223 

Asquith,  Rt.  Hon.  H.  H.,  meeting 
of,  with  A.C.S.,  213 

Astrophel,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  dedi- 
cated to  Morris,  276 

At  a  Month's  End,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  242 


339 


340    ALGERNON  CHARLES   SWINBURNE 


At  the  Pines  (Lucas),  on  A.C.S.'s 
appearance  in  later  life, 
285 

Atalanta,  story  of,  as  told  by 
A.C.S.,  and  by  Ovid, 
111  et  sqq. 

Atalanta  in  Calydon,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  99;  date  of 
beginning,  A.C.S.  on, 
123 ;  Greek  dedica- 
tion of,  to  Landor, 
106,  110,  114-15;  pub- 
lication and  recep- 
tion of,  107  et  sqq.,  117, 
140 ;  second  edition 
of,  120;  Thirlwall's 
criticism  on,  114-15. 

Athenian  Elders,  Chorus  of,  in 
Erechtheus,  227,  230 

Athens,  ode  by  A.C.S.,  229 

Auguste  Vacquerie,  by  A.C.S.,  in 
French,  226 

Aurora  Leigh  (E.  B.  Browning), 
44 

Austria,  A.C.S.'s  denunciations 
of,  6 

Austrian  connections  of  A.C.S.,  5 

Autobiographical  Notes  (Scott), 
A.C.S.'s  annoyance  at, 
72-3 

Autobiography,  of  J.  S.  Mill,  293 

Ave  atque  Vale,  elegy  on  Baude- 
laire by  A.C.S.,  92, 
167,  168,  240 

Bagot,  Richard,  novels  of,  A.C.S.'s 

interest  in,  248 
Bailey,  P.  J.,  and  the  drama,  76 
Baker,  Sir  Samuel,  148 
Balaklava       Charge,        impression 

made     by,     on     A.C.S., 

28,  29 
Balder  (Dobell),  A.C.S.'s  views  on, 

76,  111 
Balkan     War     of     1876,     A.C.S.'s 

writings  on,  233 
Ballad     of    Bulgarie,     by     A.C.S., 

233 
Ballad  of  Life,  by  A.C.S.,  date  of, 

145 
Ballad     of     Truthful     Charles,     by 

A.C.S.,  292,  335 
Ballade   of  Dreamland,    by    A.C.S., 

melody  of,  241-2 
Balliol     College,     A.C.S.     at,     28, 

33  et  sqq. 
Banville,  Theodore  de,  265 


Barbes,  Armand,  Sonnets  on,  by 
A.C.S.,  185 

Bariow,  Sir  Thomas,  280 

"Barry  Cornwall,"  see  Procter 

Baudelaire,  and  A.C.S.'s  article 
on  Les  Fleurs  du  Mai, 
88,  89  et  sqq.,  relation 
between  the  poets, 
90-2,  148;  elegy  on, 
by  A.C.S.,  92,  167, 
168,  240 

Beaton,  Mary,  and  Chastelard, 
258-9 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  A.C.S.'s 
proposed  article  on, 
223 

Beddoes,  T.  L.,  and  the  drama, 
76,  295,  296 

Beerbohm,  Mr.  Max,  on  A.C.S.'s 
appearance,  manner, 

and  elfishness,  303,  and 
on  his  voice,  307 

Before  a  Crucifix,  poem,  by  A.C.S., 
196 

Before  the  Mirror,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  subject  of,  160, 
273 

Beranger,  lyrics  of,  90 

Bible,  the,  A.C.S.'s  knowledge  of, 
9,  17 

Bird,  Miss  Alice,  140;  on  A.C.S.'s 
account  of  the  writing 
of  A  Ballad  from 
Dreamland,  241 ;  on 
A.C.S.'s  eccentricities, 
213-14;  on  A.C.S.'s 
readings  of  Songs  be- 
fore Sunrise,  187 

Bird,  Dr.  George,  and  A.C.S.,  121, 
140,  214 

Birthday  Ode  for  Victor  Hugo,  by 
A.C.S.,  253,  254 

Bishop  Blougrarns         Apology 

(Browning),  40 

Blaaven,  climbed  by  A.C.S.  and 
Nichol,  52 

Blake,  William,  4;  A.C.S.'s  in- 
terest in,  104,  180; 
mysticism  of,  analysed 
by  A.C.S.,  181;  book 
on,  by  A.C.S.,  142,  154, 
180-2 

Blanc,  Louis,  184,  185 

Blast.  The,  of  the  Trumpet  against 
the  Monstrous  Regi- 
ment of  Women  (Knox), 
130 


INDEX 


341 


Blind,  Karl,  A.C.S.,  introduced  by, 
to  Mazzini,  166 

Blind,  Mathilde,  271 

Blunt,  Miss  J.  H.,  337 

Boar  of  Calydon,  the  great,  111-13 

Boccaccio,  and  the  Decameron,  79 

Boer  War,  A.C.S.'s  attitude  to, 
292-3 

Bonchurch,  A.C.S.'s  burial-place 
at,  281-2 

Bcrrder  Ballads,  by  A.C.S.,  273-4, 333 

BothweU,  drama  by  A.C.S.,  77, 
125,  201,  205,  256,  261; 
features  of,  215-18 

Bradley,  Professor  Andrew  C, 
204,  217,  296-7 

Brampton,  Lord,  312-13 

Brantdme,  on  Chastelard,  127,  132 

British  attitude  to  French  poetry 
(1862),  89-90 

Brome,  essay  planned  on,  by  A.C.S., 
223 

Bronte,  Charlotte,  A.C.S.'s  praise 
of,  235 

Bronte,  Emily,  A.C.S.  on,  235-6 

Brown,  Oliver  Madox,  200 

Brown,  Ford  Madox,  and  his  wife, 
66,  185,  200,  214 

Brown,  Professor  P.  Hume,  on 
A.C.S.'s  contribution 
to  the  study  of  Queen 
Mary  Stuart,  257;  on 
Knox's  attitude  to 
Chastelard,  128-9 

Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  87; 
parody  of,  by  A.C.S., 
252,  253 

Browning,  Robert,  87,  205,  289, 
314 ;  acceptance  by, 
of  presidency  of  the 
New  Shakspere  So- 
ciety, 251 ;  essay  by, 
and  poems  of,  intro- 
duced by  A.C.S.  at 
Oxford,  39-40;  love 
as  treated  by,  131; 
parody  of,  by  A.C.S., 
252,  253;  at  Pitlochry, 
A.C.S.  on  his  "new 
poem,"  203 ;  poems 
by,  56;  in  the  'sixties, 
135;  and  the  success 
of  The  Ring  and  the 
Book,  259 ;  sympathy 
of,  with  revolutionary 
style,  108;  type  of  a 
healthy  genius,  283 


Bryce,  Viscount,  on  A.C.S.  at 
Oxford,  33,  35,  37,  39, 
59,  60 

Buchanan,  Robert,  and  the 
"Fleshly  School  of 
Poetry,"  205 ;  libel 
action  of,  against  the 
Examiner,  312-13 

Burd  Margaret,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  333 

Burne-Jones,  Lady,  recollections 
by,  of  A.C.S.,  66-7 

Burne-Jones,  Sir  Edward,  58, 
82;  friendship  of,  with 
A.C.S.,  43  &  n.,  66, 
212,  219,  237,  261; 
A.C.S.'s  letters  to,  on 
his  wish  to  enter  the 
army,  28-9,  on  auto- 
biography in  The 
Sisters,  32;  on  im- 
written  letters  to  old 
friends,  311;  support 
by,  of  Poems  and 
Ballads,  138,  their  dedi- 
cation to  him,  144 ;  and 
Howell,  159;  mot  of,  on 
Dr.  Acland,  51 ;  posi- 
tion of,  in  the  'sixties, 
136 ;   death  of,  271 

Burton,  Sir  Richard,  140,  159; 
adventures  and  writ- 
ings of,  121 ;  friend- 
ship of,  with  A.C.S., 
121-2,  270;  A.C.S.'s 
stay  with,  at  Vichy, 
184;  dedication  to, 
of  A.C.S.'s  translation 
of  Villon,  242,  and  of 
Poems  and  Ballads, 
2nd  Series,  240;  letters 
to,  from  A.C.S.,  on  his 
literary  scheme  (1867), 
164-5;  on  a  plan  for 
"shocking  the  public," 
164-5;  in  favom*  of 
Poems  and  Ballads, 
138,  his  fears  concern- 
ing, 151 ;  death  of, 
271 

Bussy  d'  Ambois,  play  (Chapman), 
76,  77,  221 

By  the  North  Sea,  poem  by  A.C.S., 
his  own  view  on,  255 

Byron,  Lord,  157 ;  A.C.S.'s  attitude 
to  all  different  dates, 
and  Selections  from, 
142-3,  182,  220-1,  289 


342    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


Byron    Memorial    Committee    and 

A.C.S.,  220 
Byronism  of  A.C.S.,  his  own  words 

on,  308-9 
By  water.     Professor    Ingram,     39; 

on      A.C.S.'s      relations 

with  Jowett,  202,  213  h. 

Cairoli,  Giovanni,  Ode  to,  by  Car- 
ducci,  192  n. 

Cairoli,  Signora,  Ode  to,  by 
A.C.S.,  192 

Cambo,  A.C.S.'s  life  at,  29 

Cambridge  University,  A.C.S.'s 
visit  to,  182;  recep- 
tion at,  of  Poems  and 
Ballads,  161 

Campfield,  George,  71 

Capheaton,  seat  of  the  Swinburne 
family,  2;  A.C.S.;s 
reference  to,  in  his 
poems,  9,  and  its  eCFect 
on  him,  10;  his  visits 
to,  50,  65,  71 

Carducci,  G.,  Ode  by,  to  G.  Cairoli, 
192  n. 

Carleton,  G.  W.,  and  the  with- 
drawal of  Poems  and 
Ballads,  162 

Carlisle,  George  Howard,  9th 
Earl  of,  166;  and 
Leaves  of  Grass,  94 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  A.C.S.'s  atti- 
tude to,  at  different 
periods,  57,  211-12, 
301 ;  Nichol's  admira- 
tion for,  53,  57 

Catullus,  A.C.S.'s  delight  in,  25, 
299 

Celestina,  by  Fernando  de  Rojas, 
length  of,  215  n. 

Century,  A,  of  Roundels,  by  A.C.S., 
publication  and  dedi- 
cation of,  266-7 

"Ces  buissons  et  ces  arbres," 
verses  by  Chastelard, 
128 

Chabot,  play,  76 

Channel  Islands,  A.C.S.'s  delight 
in,  233-4,  264 

Channel  Passage,  A,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  32,  280 

Chapman,  George,  A.C.S.'s  essay 
on,  222;  influence  of 
his  style  on  A.C.S.,  76; 
works  of,  A.C.S.'s  study 
of,  76,  221-3 


Chapman  and  Hall,  as  A.C.S.'s 
publishers,  215 

Chase,  Mr.  Lewis  N.,  on  Emerson's 
remarks  on  Landor, 
211  n. 

Chasseur  Noir,  Le  (Hugo),  196 

Chastelard,  Pierre  de  Boscozel  de, 
in  actual  history,  126 
et  sqq.,  258-9;  verses 
of,  128 

Chastelard,  dramatic  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  75,  147,  201, 
218,  256,  315;  A.C.S.'s 
long  work  on,  81, 
123-4;  publication,  120, 
122,  131,  reception, 
129,  133 

Chatham  Place,  and  its  associa- 
tions, 66,  70 

Chdtiments,  Les  (Hugo),  195,  196; 
effect  of,  on  A.C.S.,  54, 
302 

Chatto,  Andrew,  and  A.C.S.,  247; 
and  the  lost  novel, 
164  n. 

Chaucer  and  Dante,  A.C.S.  on, 
148 

Chester  Street,  Grosvenor  Place, 
birthplace  of  A.C.S. ,  4 

Children,  small,  A.C.S.'s  pleasure  in, 
267,  271-2,  304-5,  312 

Children,  The,  of  the  Chapel,  by 
A.C.S.  and  his  cousin, 
100 

Children's  Bible  (Jowett),  A.C.S.'s 
help  in  editing,  202 

Chopin,  283 

Choruses  in  Atalanta,  115,  116-17, 
118-19 

Christopher  Marlowe  in  relation  to 
Greene,  Peele,  and 
Lodge  (prose),  by 
A.C.S.,  334 

Chronicle  of  Queen  Fredegond 
(prose),  by  A.C.S.,  80, 
333 

Chthonia,  in  Erechtheus,  230 

"Clarified  Nihilism,"  A.C.S.'s 
•  definition  of  his  re- 
ligion, 309 

Cleopatra,  verses  by  A.C.S.  on  a 
drawing  by  Sandys, 
98 ;  publication  of, 
Meredith  on,  155 

Clifford,  Professor  W.  K.,  on  the 
intellectual  idealism  of 
A.C.S.,  194  &  n. 


INDEX 


343 


Cockerell,  Mr.  Sydney  C,  43;  on 
A.C.S.  as  conversa- 
tionalist, and  on  his 
reading  aloud,  298-9 

Coleridge's  Poems,  A.C.S. 's  selec- 
tion from  and  essay 
on,  182 

College  Library,  Eton,  A.C.S.'s 
reading  in,  16,  320-1 

Collier,  Jeremy,  157 

Collingwood,  Admiral  Lord,  5  &  n. 

Collins,  William,  301 

Colvin,  Sir  Sidney,  207;  letter  to, 
from  A.C.S.,  on  the 
dedicatory  sonnet  to 
Hugo,  in  Botkivell, 
218 

Combieres,  victory  of,  A.C.S.'s 
estimate  of,  188 

Commemoration  Ode,  by  A.C.S., 
18,  275 

Congreve,  William,  157;  A.C.S.'a 
article  on,  42,  86  n. 

Contemplations,  Les  (Hugo),  195; 
effect  of,  on  A.C.S.,  302 

Cook,  Sir  E.  T.,  155 

Cookesley,  W,  G.,  and  A.C.S.  at 
Eton,  15 

Corneille,  on  love  in  tragedy,  131 

Cornhill  Magazine,  poem  in,  by 
A.C.S.,  98 

Cornish  visits  of  A.C.S.,  99-100, 
106,  219 

Correggio,  picture  attributed  to, 
103-4 

Correspondence  of  A.C.S.,  how 
dealt  with,  335-6 

Cosmic  Emotion  (Clifford),  on 
A.C.S.'s  intellectual 

idealism,  194  &  n. 

Court  of  Love  (Chaucer),  French 
influence  on,  A.C.S. 
on, 148 

"Cousin  Hadji,"  nickname  of 
A.C.S.  in  childhood,  8 

Crawford,  Mr.  Donald,  on  A.C.S. 
at  Oxford,  34-5,  and 
in  1878,  243 

Creighton,  Mandell  (late  Bishop 
of  London),  250 

Crewe,  Marquess  of,  vii 

Criminal  Case,  A  (prose),  by 
A.C.S.,  334 

Critical  Elegy,  form  of  verse 
devised  by  A.C.S.,  241 

Criticism  as  practised  by  A.C.S., 
169,  241,  265 


Culver  Cliff,  A.C.S.'s  climb  up,  30 
Curzon  of  Kedleston,  Earl,  and  the 
offer     of     an     honorary 
degree  to  A.C.S.,  64  n. 

D'Ajstntjnzio,  Gabriele,  political 
emotional  poems  by, 
192 

Dante,  and  Chaucer,  A.C.S,  on, 
148;  and  the  Tiresias 
of  A.C.S.'s  poem,  177; 
readings  of  the  former 
by  Signora  Fronduti, 
337 

Daublgny,  C.  F.,  artist,  and  A.C.S., 
119-20 

Davidson,  John,  poet,  and  A.C.S., 
243-4 

Day,  John,  proposed  essay  on,  by 
A.C.S.,  223 

Dead  Love  (prose),  by  A.C.S.,  80; 
publication  of,  334-5 

Death,  The,  of  Sir  John  Franklin, 
poem  by  A.C.S.,  44-6, 
333 

Decameron,  the,  79 

Dedication  of  the  Idylls  of  the 
King  (Tennyson),  char- 
acteristics of,  134 

Defence  of  Guenevere  (Morris), 
A.C.S.  on,  55-6 

Dekker,  Essay  on,  by  A.C.S., 
206 

De  Tabley,  Lord,  and  the  laureate- 
ship,  277 

Devil's  Due,  The,  by  A.C.S.,  nature 
of,  226;  action  on, 
why  lost  by  the  Ex- 
aminer, 312-13 

Devonshire,  7th  Duke  of,  250 

Dicey,  Edward,  39,  44 

Dicey,  Professor  A.  V.,  on  the 
"Old  Mortality"  de- 
testation    of     Napoleon 

m.,  41 

Dickens,  Charles,  novels  by, 
A.C.S.'s  love  for,  248; 
on  A.C.S.  as  a  boy,  23 

Dirae,  sonnets  by  A.C.S.,  210,  225 ; 
dates  of,  175-6 

Discovery  of  the  North-West  Pas- 
sage, see  Death  of  Sir 
John  Franklin,  above 

Dbcon,  Richard  Watson  (later 
Canon),  37,  43;  and 
the  laureateship,  277 ; 
poem  by,  277 


344    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 


Dobell,  Sydney,  A.C.S.'s  views  on, 
76,  111,  295 

Dolmance,  Powell's  fetretat  villa, 
described  by  Lorrain, 
178 

Dolores,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  155,  172, 
189 ;  A.C.S.'s  recita- 
tions of,  133;  date  of, 
145-6 ;  reception  of, 
at  Cambridge,  161 

Domhey  and  Son,  A.C.S.'s  first 
reading,  11 

Dorset  Street,  No.  22a,  A.C.S.'s 
lodgings  at,  106,  183 

Drinkwater,  Mr.  John,  viii 

Drum  Taps  (Whitman),  A.C.S. 
on,  162 

Dry  den,  John,  157 

Duke,  The,  of  Gandia,  incomplete 
drama  by  A.C.S.,   280 

EARLY  Italian  Painters  (Ros- 
setti),  75 

Earthly  Paradise  (Morris),  A.C.S.'s 
allusion  to,  190 

East  Dene,  Bonchurch,  early 
home  of  A.C.S.,  6 

Edinburgh  Review,  Atalanta  re- 
viewed in,  by  Lord 
Houghton,  114,  115 

Edmund  Burke  (Morley),  168 

Eleatic  Philosophers,  Essay  on,  by 
A.C.S.,  and  Jowett's 
comment,  57-8 

Elegiac  poems  by  A.C.S.,  110,  121, 
167,  208,  240-1,  246; 
the  three  great  English, 
A.C.S.  on,  167;  made 
four  by  his  Ave  atque 
Vale,  167-8 

Elettra  (D'Annunzio),  192 

Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  drama- 
tists, A.C.S.'s  delight 
in,  17,  21,  and  pro- 
posed work  on,  223 

Ellis,  F.  S.,  publisher,  relations  of, 
with  A.C.S.,  186-7 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  A.C.S.'s 
invectives  on,  211  &  n. 

Empedocles  on  Etna  (Arnold), 
53,  111 

Empereur,  L',  s'amuse  (Hugo), 
effect  on  A.C.S.,  303 

Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  A.C.S.'s 
article  in,  on  Mary, 
Queen  of  Scots,  257, 
258 


England,  and  her  rulers,  A.C.S.'s 
attitude  to,  174,  291-2 

Enoch  Arden  (Tennyson),  public 
feeling  on,  108;  tend- 
ency typified  by,  134 

Epaves,  Les  (Baudelaire),  90 

Epicede,  elegy  by  A.C.S.,  240 

Epictetus,  on  the  freedom  of  the 
soul,  194-5 

Epilogue  to  Poems  and  Ballads,  by 
A.C.S.,  date  of,  255 

Epipsychidion  (Shelley),  A.C.S.'s 
Prelude  to  Tristram 
compared  with,  263 

Erechtheus,  poetical  drama,  by 
A.C.S.,  129,  227-8,  et 
sqq. 

Ernest  Clouet  (prose),  by  A.C.S., 
334 

Essays  and  Studies  (prose),  by 
A.C.S.,  225 

Eton,  A.C.S.  at,  impressions  of 
fellow  -  scholars  and 

others  on,  11  et  sqq. 
317  et  sqq.;  A.C.S.'s 
feelings  towards,  18, 
19,  36,  222,  323,  and 
Ode  on,  18,  275; 
funeral  tribute  from, 
to  the  poet,  18-19; 
verses  alleged  to  be 
written  at,  144-5 

Eton,  Ninth  Jubilee  of,  1891, 
A.C.S.'s  Ode  for,  18, 
275 

Etretat,  A.C.S.'s  visits  to,  171, 
178-9,  185,  300 

Euripides,  A.C.S.'s  hatred  of, 
230-2;  his  own  words 
on,  231 

Evan  Harrington  (Meredith),  93 

Eve,  The,  of  Revolution,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  183,  191 

Evening,  An,  at  Vichy,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  184 

Examiner,  The,  A.C.S.'s  article  in, 
libel  action  induced  by, 
312-13;  Lord  Hough- 
ton's defence  in,  of 
Poems  and  Ballads, 
162;  sonnets  in,  on 
Napoleon  III.,  by 
A.C.S.,  209 

FAERIE  Queen,  The,  5 
Fantin-Latour,  Alphonse,  98 
Farringford,  245 


INDEX 


345 


Faustine,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  88,  172; 
date  of,  145 

Fechter  as  "Othello,"  effect  on 
A.C.S.,  78-9 

FSlicien  Cossu  (prose),  by  A.C.S.,  334 

FSlise,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  189; 
A.C.S.'s  recitations,  133 ; 
probable  date  of,  145 

Femmes  DamnSes,  Les  (Baudelaire), 
90 

Fenians  of  Manchester,  A.C.S.'s 
verse-pamphlet  on,  174 

Fenwick,  Rev.  Collingwood  Foster, 
tutor  to  A.C.S.,   10-11 

Field,  Julian,  A.C.S.'s  visit  to 
(1869),  183 

FitzGerald,  Edward,  and  the 
Rubdiydf,  94 

Fitzmaurice-Kelly,  Prof.  James, 
see  Kelly. 

"Fleshly  School  of  Poetry," 
Buchanan's  pamphlet 
i  I  V  on,  205 

Fleurs  du  Mai  (Baudelaire), 
A.C.S.'s  copy,  90  &  n., 
and  article  on,  88, 
89  et  sqq.,  335 

Florence,  A.C.S.'s  hero-worship  at, 
of  Landor,  21,  101-5; 
other  friends  and  plea- 
sure, 104,  180 

Fly,  white  butterflies,  out  to  sea, 
from  A  Century  of 
Roundels  by  A.C.S., 
267 

Ford,  John,  study  on,  by  A.C.S.,  206 

Forsaken  Garden,  The,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  232;  music  of, 
241 

Fortnightly  Review,  A.C.S.'s  articles 
in,  168-9,  183,  184,  185, 
249,  335 ;  instalments 
published  in,  of  A.C.S.'s 
Study  of  Shakespeare, 
reception  of,  and  con- 
troversy on,  227 ; 
A.C.S.'s  attack  on 
Whistler  in  (1888), 
272-3 

Franklin,  Sir  John,  fate  of,  A.C.S.'s 
poem  on,  44-6,  333 

French  Influence  on  A.C.S.,  80, 
206,  207;  see  also  Hugo 
Poems  by  A.C.S.,  120,  128; 
French  views  of,  207, 
328-9 ;  Mr.  George 
Moore  on,  328-9 


French  —  continued. 

Poetry,  British  attitude  to  (1862), 

89-90;      and     Chaucer, 

A.C.S.  on,  148 
Republic     of     1870     hailed      by 

A.C.S.  in  an  Ode,  186 
Writings,    ancient,    in    the    Ash- 

burnham  Library, 

A.C.S.'s       delight       in, 

80 
Friendship,       A.C.S.'s       idea      of, 

310-13 ;     sentiment    of, 

in    Poems    and    Ballads, 

Second  Series,  240 
Fronduti,  Signora  Annunziata,  and 

A.C.S.'s  love  for  Italian 

poetry,  337 
Frost,  Misses,  and  A.C.S.,  247 
Froude,  J.  Anthony,  314 ;    attitude 

of,   to   Mary,   Queen   of 

Scots,  258 
Fryston,  A.C.S.'s  visits  to,  95,  121, 

158,  and  reading  of  his 

poems  at,  95-6 
Furnivall,  Dr.,  controversy  started 

by,  with  A.C.S.,  on  the 

date    of    Henry     VIII., 

227,  249-51 

GARDEN  of  Cymodoce,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  inspired  by 
Sark,  233,  254,  264 

Garibaldi,  Ricciotti,  A.C.S.'s  meet- 
ing with,  185 

Gaskell,  Mrs.,  and  A.C.S.,  among 
Florentine  pictures,  104 

Gaube,  Lake  of,  swum  by  A.C.S., 
97 

Gautier,  Theophile,  influence  of, 
on  A.C.S.,  168;  death 
of,  A.C.S.'s  contribu- 
tions to  the  memorial 
volume  on,  206-8 

Gebir  (Landor),  290 

George  Chapman:  A  Critical  Es- 
say, by  A.C.S.,  publica- 
tion of,  222-3 

"George  Eliot,"  A.C.S.'s  dislike 
for,  235;  as  Jowett's 
guest,  203 ;  treatment 
by,  of  love,  131 

Germ,  The,  136 

Germany,  A.C.S.'s  attitude  to, 
291,  292-3;  sole  visit 
to,  of  the  poet,  32 

Gesta  d'Oltremare  (D'Annunzio), 
192 


346    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


Giambi  ed  Epodi  (Carducci),  192  n. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  119 

Gladstone,  Rt.  Hon.  W.  E.,  A.C.S.'s 

dislike    for,    292;     why 

opposed    to    A.C.S.    as 

Poet  Laureate,  277 
Goblin  Market  (Christina  Rossetti), 

success  of,  108,  137 
Golden  bells  of  tvelcome  rolled,  Hnes  on 

children,  by  A.C.S.,  304 
Golden  House,    The,  lost  poem  by 

A.C.S.,  56 
Gordon,     Lady     Mary,     aunt     of 

A.C.S.,  7,  8,  11 
Gordon,     Mary,     see    Leith,     Mrs. 

Disney 
Gordon,  Sir  Henry  Percy,  uncle  of 

A.C.S.,  7,   11,   100,  204, 

234 
Gordon,  Sir  Willoughby,  7 
Gosse,  Edmund,  177-8 
Grafton    Street,    No.    16,    A.C.S.'s 

rooms  at,  66 
Graham,    Lorimer,    A.C.S.'s    elegy 

on,  240 
Great      James      Street,      No.      3, 

A.C.S.'s  rooms  at,   214, 

236-7,  329 
Greek,   A.C.S.'s   knowledge  of,   20, 

212,  213 
Greek  Dedication  in  Atalanta,  106; 

Thirlwall   on,    110,    114, 

115 
Greek    poems,    by    A.C.S.,    in    Le 

Tombeau      de      Gaidier, 

207 
Green,    G.    M.,    publisher,    partner 

of  Ellis,  186-7 
Green,  Thomas  Hill,  Oxford  friend 

of  A.C.S.,  37-8,  39;    on 

A.C.S.'s      devotion      to 

Orsini      and       Mazzini, 

55;     on    the    nature    of 

Liberty,  195 
Grenfell,  Algernon,  39 
Guernsey,  Hugo's  home  in,  184 
Sunday     in,    A.C.S.     on,     264; 

visits     to,     of     A.C.S., 

233-4,  264 

Haldane,  Lord,  on  A.C.S.  at  Lon- 
don Restaurant,  238-9 

Halliwell-Phillipps,  J.,  friendship 
with,  of  A.C.S.,  and  sup- 
port of,  in  the  Furni- 
vall  controversy,  S249, 
250 


Hamadryad,  The  (Landor),  A.C.S.'s 
admiration  for,  21 

Hardy,  Thomas,  letter  to,  from 
A.C.S.  on  his  father, 
5;  lines  by,  on  A.C.S.'s 
burial-place,  282 

Harrison,    Edwin,    A.C.S.'s    Scotch 
tramp  with,  203-4 
on  A.C.S.'s  attempt  to  cut  down 
Bothwell,  217 

Hatch,  Edwin,  Oxford  friend  of 
A.C.S.,  37,  42.  43.  56, 
58 

Haystack,  The,  in  the  Floods 
(Morris),  A.C.S.'s  in- 
terest in,  43 

Hazlitt,  W.,  73 

Hebrides,  A.C.S.'s  visit  to,  52 

Hedderwick,  Mr.  Alexander,  on 
A.C.S.'s  appearance  in 
1878,  244 

Hellenics  (Landor),  A.C.S.'s  early 
delight  in,  21 

Hellenism   of   Erechtheus   and   Ata- 
lanta, 228,  231 

Henry  VIII.  (Shakespeare),  date 
of,  the  Swinburne- 
Fumivall  controversy 
on,  227,  249-51 

Heptalogia,  or  the  Seven  against 
Sense,  parodies  in  verse 
by  A.C.S.,  251-3,  254 

Heredia,  Jose  Maria  de,  207 

Heretic's  Tragedy,  The  (Browning), 
40 

Hermapkroditus,  sonnet  by  A.C.S., 
date  of,  98,  145 

Hermitage,  Water  of,  and  its 
associations,  125 

Hertha,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  177,  194 ; 
A.C.S.'s  own  view  of, 
193 ;  probable  date 
of,  180 ;  summarising 
A.C.S.'s  pantheism, 

309,  310 

Hill,  George  Birkbeck,  39,  44 

Historia  Francorum  (Gregory  of 
Tours),  80 

History  of  Greece  (Thirlwall),  114 

History  of  the  Reformation  in  Scot- 
land (Knox),  128 

Holland,  Professor  E.  T.,  and  the 
Old  Mortality  Society, 
39  &  n.\  on  A.C.S.  at 
Oxford,  35,  44 

Holmes,  Augusta,  and  music  for 
A.C.S.'s  poems,  239 


INDEX 


347 


Holmwood,  later  home  of  the  Swin- 
burnes,  119,  123,  157. 
162,  163,  171,  172,  183, 
199,  201,  205,  219,  232, 
234,  244 

Home  Rule,  A.C.S.'s  attitude  to, 
292 

Homme,  L\  qui  rit  (Hugo),  A.C.S.'s 
review  of,  and  Hugo's 
letter  thereon,  32,  183, 
184 

Home,  R.  H.,  challenge  of,  to 
A.C.S.,  for  public 
swimming  contest,  264 

Hotten,  John  Camden,  A.C.S.'s 
publisher  (1866  et  sqq.), 
relations  of,  with  A.C.S., 
186-7,  201,  221-3;  and 
A  Song  of  Italy,  172 

Houghton,  Lady,  96 

Houghton,  Lord,  friend  of  A.C.S., 
73,  74  et  sqq.,  87,  111, 
170,  211,  337;  friction 
between,  139 ;  decline 
of  friendship,  212;  and 
A.C.S.'s  one  public 
speech,  146-7 ;  help 
of,  in  launching 

A.C.S.'s  verses,  87, 
138  et  sqq.,  153-4; 
review  by,  of  Atalanta, 
114,  115;  letters  to, 
from  A.C.S.,  on  his 
articles  on  Les  Mise- 
rables,  89;  on  publica- 
tion of  Tristram,  262; 
on  Landor  (in  1864), 
101,  102;  on  the  later 
edition  of  Leaves  of 
Grass,  95;  on  his  life 
at  Putney  (1879),  245; 
visits  to,  of  A.C.S., 
95-6,  121,  158;  death 
of,  271 

House  of  Lords,  A.C.S.'s  vitupera- 
tive poems  on,  269 

Howard,  George,  see  Carlisle, 
9th  Earl 

Howell,  Charles  Augustus,  159, 
212,  214 

Hugo,  Victor,  154;  A.C.S.'s  ad- 
miration of,  21,  52, 
88-9,  148,  202,  280, 
288,  302;  and  his  ad- 
miration for  A.C.S.'s 
writings,  185;  A.C.S.'s 
sonnets      called      Inter- 


Hugo,  ^'icto^  —  continued 

cession,  approved  by, 
176;  A.C.S.'s  verses 
on  his  78th  birthday, 
253;  A.C.S.'s  post- 
humous eulogies  of, 
276;  attacks  by,  on 
Napoleon  HI.,  210; 
fame  of,  90;  influence 
of,  on  A.C.S.,  195-7 ; 
invitations  from,  to 
A.C.S.,  184,  239,  265; 
Les  MisSrables  by, 
A.C.S.'s  articles  ou, 
85-9;  and  Le  Tombeau 
de  .  .  .  Gautier,  207; 
letters  from,  to  A.C.S., 
acknowledging  A.C.S.'s 
articles  on  Les  MisS- 
rables, 89 ;  acknow- 
ledging the  dedication 
of  Botlnvell,  220;  on 
the  latter 's  review  of 
UHomme  qui  rit,  183; 
political  poetry  of,  54, 
196 ;  royal  position 
of  (1882),  265;  tra- 
gedies of,  A.C.S.'s 
views  on  presentation 
of,  79 ;  Quafre-vingt- 
trei:^e  by,  A.C.S.  on, 
219-20 ;  sonnet  dedi- 
catory to,  by  A.C.S. 
in  Bothwell,  218 ; 
volumes  by,  in  A.C.S.'s 
library,  281 ;  death  of, 
A.C.S.'s  writing  occa- 
sioned by,  269 

Hunt,  Leigh,  140 

Hutton,  Richard  Holt,  of  the 
Spectator,  87,  93,  96. 
97,  210 

Hymn  of  Man,  poem  by  A.C.S., 
183 ;  offence  caused 
by,  308 

Hymn  to  Proserpine,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  182-3 

IDYLLS  of  the  King  (Tennyson), 

129 
In  the  Bay,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  237 
In  the  Tvnlight,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  333 
Inchbold,  J.  W.,  artist,  and  A.C.S., 

99-100;    death  of,  271 
Infelicia,  by  Adah  Isaacs  Menken, 

touched   up   by   A.C.S., 

171-2 


348    ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 


Inferiae,    elegy    by    A.C.S.    on    his 

father,  240 
Ingelow,  Jean,  135 
Intercession,      four      sonnets      by 

A.C.S.,  dates  of,  175-6; 

Hugo's      approval      of, 

176;    A.C.S.'s  gusto   in 

reading,  187 
Iphigenia   (Landor),   A.C.S.'s  plea- 
sure in,  21 
Isle   of   Wight,   A.C.S.'s   childhood 

in,   6  et  sqq.,   and   later 

visits     to,     80,     100     et 

alibi 
Italia,    charge    to,    in    A    Song    of 

Italy,  174 
Italian   association    of   A.C.S.    and 

his  family,  5 
Novellini,       influence      of,       on 

A.C.S.,  80 
Poetry,  A.C.S.'s  love  of,  337 
Tours  of  A.C.S.,  67,  100,  173-4 
Italy  (Rogers),  24 
Italy   and   its   politics,    interest   in, 

of  A.C.S.,  54,  55,  165-6, 

192 
Itylus,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  104  &  n.; 

probable   date    of,    145 ; 

recitations    of,    by    the 

poet,  133 

JANE  Eyre  (Bronte),  A.C.S.  on, 
235 

Jebb,  Professor,  250 

Jerusalem  (Blake),  182 

Jesus  Christ,  attitude  to,  of  A.C.S., 
310 

John  Ford  (prose),  by  A.C.S.,  206 

Johnson,  Manuel  John,  astrono- 
mer, A.C.S.'s  admira- 
tion for,  38 

Joseph  and  His  Brethren  (Wells), 
A.C.S.'s  admiration 

for,  73-4,  76;  reprint 
of,  A.C.S.'s  essay  pre- 
fixed to,  225 

Jowett,  Benjamin,  Master  of 
Balliol,  attitude  of,  to 
intelligent  young  men, 
57 ;  relations  with, 
and  influence  on  A.C.S., 
33-4,  54,  55,  58,  59,  60, 
64,165-6,199,231;  over 
their  writings,  212, 
213  &  n.,  214;  visits 
to,  of  A.C.S.,  106,  183, 
201-3,   227,   269;    other 


Jowett,  Benjamin — continued 

guests,  203;  on  A.C.S.'s 
scholarship,  110;  on 
Carlyle's  influence,  57 ; 
on  the  length  of  Both- 
well,  217;   death  of,  271 

Joynes,  Mr.,  A.C.S.'s  Eton  house- 
master and  tutor,  13, 
320 

Keate  House,  Eton,  A.C.S.'s 
boarding  house,  13 

Keats,  John,  73,  104 ;  on  imagina- 
tion at  different  ages, 
35-6,  295 

Keble,  Rev.  John,  9 

Kelly,  Professor  J.  Fitzmaurice, 
on  A.C.S.'s  voice,  307; 
on  the  length  of  Celes- 
tina,  215  n.;  on  a  visit 
to  A.C.S.  in  1909,  281 

Kelmscott  Press  books,  given  by 
Morris  to  A.C.S.,  271 

Kemble,  Adelaide,  see  Sartoris,  Mrs. 

Kempsford,  A.C.S.'s  studies  at,  33 

Ker,  Professor  W.  P.,  on  A.C.S. 
as  conversationalist, 

297-8 

Kernahan,  Mr.  Coulson,  on  A.C.S. 
in  reverie,  280 

Kingsley,  Henry,  on  A.C.S.  in 
town  and  country,  199 

Kingsley,  Rev.  Charles,  154 ;  on 
A.C.S.  as  poet,  147 

Kirkup,  Seymour,  and  A.C.S.,  at 
Florence,  104,  180 

Knight,  Joseph,  A.C.S.'s  friendship 
with,  123,  150,  168; 
the  quarrel,  212;  let- 
ter to,  from  A.C.S.,  on 
Poems   and  Ballads,  141 

Knockespock,  A.C.S.'s  stay  at,  204 

Knox,  John,  on  Chastelard,  128-9; 
writings  of,  known  to 
A.C.S.,  128,  130 

Kynance  Cove,  A.C.S.  at,  106,  219 

LADY  Maisies  Bairn,  and  other 
Poems,  by  A.C.S.,  333 

Lamartine,  90 

Lamb,  Charles,  critical  work  of, 
A.C.S.'s  scheme  for 
continuing,  206;  dinner 
in  honour  of,  arranged 
by  A.C.S.,  224-5;  on 
beauties  in  Chapman's 
works,  221 


INDEX 


349 


Lament  for  Bion  (Moschus),  167 

Land  League,  request  by,  for  a 
poem  from  A.C.S.,  and 
the  upshot,  292 

Lander,  Walter  Savage,  207; 
A.C.S.'s  hero-worship 
of,  21-2,  52,  311,  313; 
visits  to,  in  Florence, 
101-4;  Greek  dedica- 
tion to,  of  Atalanta, 
106,  other  poetical 
works  to,  and  on,  102, 
105,  255;  gift  of,  to 
A.C.S.,  103-4;  influence 
on  A.C.S.'s  style,  92, 
173,  and  political 
views,  301 ;  as  aristo- 
crat-republican, 290 ; 
bad  writing  of,  315 ; 
Centenary  of,  A.C.S.'s 
Song  for,  223,  and 
opinion  of  the  work, 
255 ;  and  Emerson, 
211  w. ;  metre  used 
by,  173;  death  of, 
A.C.S.'s   verses  on,   102 

Last  Words  of  a  Seventh-rate  Poet, 
parody  on  the  second 
Lord  Lytton,  by  A.C.S., 
252 

Latham,  F.  L.,  winner  of  Newdi- 
gate  Prize  (1858),  45 

Latin    epigrams    on    Emerson,    bv 
A.C.S.,  211 
Classics,     A.C.S.'s    attitude     to, 
25 

Laugh  and  Lie  Down,  lost  comedy, 
by  A.C.S.,  63 

Laus  Veneris,  poem  by  A.C.S., 
date  of,  145 ;  publica- 
tion of,  141 ;  relation 
of,  to  the  Rubdiydt,  94 

Lazare  (Hugo),  effect  on  A.C.S.. 
303 

Leaves  of  Grass  (Whitman), 
A.C.S.'s  views  on,  at 
different  dates,  94-5, 
162,  276 

Leighton,  Sir  Frederick,  P.  R.  A., 
119,  148,  159;  at 
Vichy,  A.C.S.'s  poem 
on,  at  his  death,  184 

Leith,  Mrs.  Disney,  cousin  of 
A.C.S.,  3  n.,  7;  on 
A.C.S.  as  a  child,  8; 
on  his  Culver  climb, 
30;   on  his  love  of  read- 


Leith,  Mrs.  Disney — continued 

ing,  9;  on  his  prepara- 
tion for  College,  33; 
on  his  riding,  22; 
story  written  by,  with 
A.C.S.,  100 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  picture  once 
attributed  to,  104 

Leopold,  Prince  (Duke  of  Albany), 
A.C.S.  on,  220 

Leper,  The,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  96, 
137 

Lesbia  Brandon,  melange  of  verse 
and  prose,  by  A.C.S., 
164  n.,  238 

Lestocq,  Mr.  W.,  on  A.C.S.'s 
portrait  of  Orsini,  237 

Letters  to  the  Press,  by  A.C.S.,  on 
the  Furnivall  contro- 
versy, 251  71.,  335 

Lewes,  George  Henry,  139,  314 

Liberal  Legislation  and  Freedom  of 
Contract,  lecture  by 
Green,  definition  in, 
of  Liberty,  195  &  n. 

Liberty,  in  A.C.S.'s  poems,  191, 
194,  195,  197  et  alibi 

Liberty,  by  J.  S.  Mill,  A.C.S.  on, 
293 

Liddell,  Mr.  A.  G.  C,  on  A.C.S.'s 
love  for  Poetae  Graeci, 
24 

Life  of  Blake  (Gilchrist),  story  and 
value  of,  180 

Life  Drama  (Smith),  A.C.S.'s 
attitude  to.  111 

Lines  by  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  on 
burial-place  of  A.C.S., 
282 

Litany,  The,  of  Nations,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,   191,   194,   291 

Literature  and  Dogma  (Arnold), 
effect  on  A.C.S.,  309-10 

Literary  Gazette,  The,  123 

"Little  White  Girl,"  picture  by 
Whistler,  A.C.S.'s  lyric 
defence  of,  160,  273 

Lives  of  the  English  Poets,  A.C.S.'s 
early  possession  of,  16 

Lizard,  the,  A.C.S.  at,  219 

Loch  Torridon,  ode  by  A.C.S., 
204 

Locker-Lampson,  Frederick,  201 

Locrine,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  269-70 

London  birthplace  and  homes  of 
A.C.S.,  4,  66,  86,  93, 
105,  106,  183,  236-7 


350    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


London — continued 

Life  of  A.C.S.,  and  its  effects  on 
his  health,  65  et  sqq., 
98-9,  119,  122-3,  140, 
158,  163,  169,  177-8, 
183,  199,  213-14,  231, 
234,  236-9;  the  end, 
244 

Lord  Scales,  ballad  by  A.C.S., 
333 

Lord  Soulis,  ballad  by  A.C.S.,  333 

Lorrain,  Jean,  on  Dolmance,  178 

Love  laid  his  sleepless  head,  song 
by  A.C.S.,  79 

Love's  Cross-Currenfs,  novel  by 
A.C.S.,  280 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  and  A.C.S., 
266 

Lucas,  Mr.  E.  V.,  on  A.C.S.'s  ap- 
pearance in  later  life, 
285 

Ludlow  J.  M.,  154,  demand  by,  for 
prosecution  of  Poems 
and  Ballads,  154-5 

Luke,  George  Rankine,  39,  44 

Luxmoore,  Mr.,  on  A.C.S.  in  Col- 
lege Library,  Eton,  16 

Lycidas  (Milton),  167 

Lycurgus,  and  the  argument  of 
Erechthens,  231 

Lynn-Linton,  Mrs.  (Eliza),  298, 
313;  letters  to,  from 
A.C.S.  on  autobiog- 
raphy in  The  Sisters, 
31,  on  Sunday  in 
Guernsey,  264,  on 
Whistler's  paintings, 
272-3;    death  of,  271 

Lytton,  1st  Lord,  help  given  by, 
concerning  Poems  and 
Ballads,  153 

Lytton,  2nd  Lord,  parody  of, 
by  A.C.S.,  and  later 
abortive  meeting  with, 
252 

"Maartens,  Maarten,"  on  his  visit 
to  A.C.S.,  279,  and  on 
A.C.S,'s       reading       of 
poetry,  308 
"Macabre,"   the,   in   A.C.S.'s   con- 
versation, 299,  300-1 
Macaulay,  Lord,  49 
M'Clintock,  Sir  Leopold,  46 
Madan,  Mr.  F.,  on  A.C.S.  in  the 
Malone    Room    of    the 
Bodleian  Library,  297 


Mademoiselle  de  Maupin  (Gau- 
tier),  preface  to.  in- 
fluence of,  on  A.C.S., 
207;  sonnet  by  him 
on  the  book,  208 

Madonna  Mia,  poem,  by  A.C.S., 
probable  date  of, 
144 

Magenta,  battle  of,  38 

Maizeroy,  Rene,  on  A.C.S.'s  ap- 
pearance, 300 

Malatesta,  Galeazzo,  A.C.S.'s  re- 
semblance to,  48 

Mallarme,  Stephane,  and  A.C.S., 
Mr.  G.  Moore  on,  327 
et  sqq. ;  letter  to,  from 
A.C.S.,  on  his  Sark 
lyrics,  233 

Mono  (Dixon),  277 

Marguerite,  Queen  of  Navarre,  and 
the  Heptameron,   79 

Marino  Faliero,  poetical  play  by 
A.C.S.,  269 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  A.C.S.'s  de- 
light in  the  works  of, 
17,  280,  and  essay  on, 
223 

Marot,  Clement,  and  the  rondeau, 
266 

Marriage,  The,  of  Heaven  and 
Hell  (Blake),  182 

Marriage,  The,  of  Monna  Lisa 
(prose),  by  A.C.S.,  333, 
335 

Marston,      Philip      Bourke,      237; 

letter    to,    from    A.C.S. 

on      Mr.      Moore's      A 

Mummer  s     Wife,     330; 

/plays    of, JA.C.S.'s    de- 

V^ight  in,  17-'^'f''"*''-iu-.) 

Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  letter  to, 
from  D.  G.  Rossetti,  on 
A.C.S.'s  genius,  87 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  article  on, 
by  A.C.S.  in  Encyclo- 
paedia Brilannica,  258 ; 
poems  and  plays  on, 
124  et  sqq.,  201;  see 
Bothioell,  Chastelard, 

and  Mary  Stuart 

Mary  Stuart,  drama  by  A.C.S.,  25; 
progress,  249 ;  publica- 
tion and  reception  of, 
256;  lyrics  in,  257; 
Hume-Brown  on,  257-9 

Massinger,  proposed  essay  on,  by 
A.C.S.,  223 


INDEX 


351 


Massinger  and  Ford's  plays, 
A.C.S.'s  early  pleasure 
in,  17 

Mater  Triumphalis,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  191,  194,  296 

Maud,  4-i;  read  by  Tennyson  to 
A.C.S.,  52 

Maupassant,  Guy  de,  on  A.C.S.'s 
appearance  and  con- 
versation,   179,    299-300 

Maurice,  Paul,  Hugo's  letter  to, 
in  praise  of  A.C.S.,  185 

Maurice,  Rev.  F.  D.,  154 

"Mazeppa,"  performance  of,  by 
Adah  Isaacs  Menken, 
171 

Mazzini,  Giuseppe,  A.C.S.'s  devo- 
tion to,  41,  54,  55; 
visit  of,  to  England, 
165,  and  relations  with 
A.C.S.,  166,  172,  175, 
177,  185;  A  Song  of 
Italy  dedicated  to, 
166;  A.C.S.'s  refer- 
ence to,  in  Songs  before 
Sunrise,  194 

"Medea,"  painting  by  Sandys, 
A.C.S.'s  defence  of,  98 

Mediterranean  Sea,  A.C.S.'s  dis- 
like of,  67 

"Medusa,"  picture  once  attributed 
to  Leonardo,   104 

Meleager,  in  the  storv  of  Atalanta, 
111-12,  il3;  chorus- 
lament  over,  in  Ata- 
lanta, 118-19 

Memorial  Verses  to  Gautier,  by 
A.C.S.,  207-8;  his  own 
comment  on,  208 

Men  and  Women  (Browning),  44 

Menken,  Adah  Isaacs,  poems  by, 
171-2 

Men  tone,  A.C.S.'s  dislike  for,  67 

Meredith,  George,  82;  and  A.C.S., 
relations  between,  75, 
86,  93,  105-6,  185, 
271,  335;  support  of, 
in  the  matter  of  Poems 
and  Ballads,  153 ; 
novels  of,  93;  Poems 
by,  A.C.S.'s  letter  on, 
92,  93-4,  136;  at 
Tudor  House,  86;  on 
A.C.S.,  93 

Merope  (Arnold),  53 

Metamorphoses  (Ovid),  the  Ata- 
lanta story  in,  112-13 


Midsummer  Holiday,  A,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  contents  of,  269 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  Autobiography 
of,  A.C.S.  on,  293;  in- 
effective in  Parliament, 
175;  Liberty  hy,  A.C.S. 
on,  293;     death  of,  209 

Millais,  Sir  John  Everett,  P.R.A., 
and  the  P.R.B.,  136 

Milnes,  Monckton,  see  Houghton, 
Lord 

Milton,  John,  207;  and  A.C.S.'s 
republicanism,  301 ; 

choral  plays  of,  109-10 

Milton,  Lord,  148 

Minstrel,  The  (Beattie),  A.C.S.'s* 
early  possession  of,  77 

Minto,  William,  editor  of  the 
Examiner,   224,   312-13 

Mirabeau,  as  aristocrat  republican, 
290;  friend  of  Sir 
John  Swinburne,  3,  4 

Miscellanies,  by  A.C.S.,  269 

MisSrables,  Les  (Hugo),  A.C.S.'s 
Spectator  articles  on, 
88-9,  335 

Mitford,  Algernon  Bertram,  see 
Redesdale,  Lord 

Modem  Love  (Meredith),  A.C.S.'s 
defence  of,  93-4;  its 
freedom  from  offence, 
137 

M.  Prudhomme  at  the  Interna- 
tional Exhibition  (prose), 
by  A.C.S.,  333 

Moore,  Mr.  George,  on  A.C.S.,  and 
Mallarme,  327  et  sqq. ; 
on  his  one  sight  of 
A.C.S.,  329-30 

Moreas,  tragedies  of,  109 

Morley,  Mr.  John  (Viscount  Morley 
of  Blackburn),  and 
A.C.S.'s  connection 

with  the  Fortnightly, 
vii,  168,  227;  letters 
to,  from  A.C.S. :  on 
hatred  of  copying,  315, 
on  length  of  Bothu-ell, 
215-16,  217,  on  his 
Memorial  Verses  to 
Gautier,  208,  on  Mill's 
Liberty,  293,  placing 
his  writings  with 
Chapman  and  Hall, 
215,  on  his  review  of 
Rossetti's  Poems,  185, 
on    A    Study   of  Shake- 


S52    ALGERNON  CHARLES   SWINBURNE 


Morley,  Mr.  John — continued 

speare,  226;  on  A.C.S.'s 
reading  aloud  of  Both- 
well,  219 

Morley,  Professor  Henry,  apolo- 
gist for  Poems  and 
Ballads,  162 

Morris,  Miss  May,  on  A.C.S.,  66 

Morris,  Mrs.  W.,  appreciation  bv, 
of  A.C.S.,  70;  beauty 
of,  200 

Morris,  William,  51,  214;  A.C.S.'s 
friendship  with,  42,  43, 
58,  66,  212,  261,  270-1, 
310;  A.C.S.'s  article 
on,  sensation  caused 
by,  169;  A.C.S.'s  atti- 
tude to  his  works,  55-6; 
allusion  to,  in  the  Pre- 
lude, 190;  Astrophel 
dedicated  to,  by  A.C.S., 
276;  reference  to,  in 
Tale  of  Balen,  278; 
poetry  of,  reception  of, 
136;  on  A.C.S.  and 
his  wealth  of  invective, 
59-60;   death  of,  271 

Mount  Street,  No.  124,  A.C.S.'s 
lodgings  at,  106 

Moxon,  Edward,  75 ;  prosecu- 
tion of,  for  reprinting 
Queen  Mab,  142 

Murray,  John,  refusal  by,  of 
Poems  and  Ballads,   141 

Music,  A.C.S.'s  attitude  to,  163, 
184 

Musset,  Alfred  de,  lyrics  of,  90; 
paraphrase  of,  by 
A.C.S.,  67 

Mustapha  (Greville),  270  &  n. 

"Mv  Second  Sermon,"  picture  by 
Millais,  136 

Myers,  Mr.  Lindo,  A.C.S.,  and  In- 
felicia,  171-2;  on  the 
size  of  A.C.S.'s  head, 
172,  284 

Nabbes,  Thomas,  works  of, 
A.C.S.'s  early  famili- 
arity with,  17;  essay 
on,  206,  223 

Napoleon  III.,  A.C.S.'s  detesta- 
tion of,  41,  54,  55,  210, 
and  poems  on,  175-6, 
187,  208-9 ;  reference 
to,  in  Songs  before 
Sunrise,  194 


National  Portrait  Gallery,  A.C.S.'s 
portrait  in,  169 

Navestock,  A.C.S.  at,  60-3 

Nephelidia,  by  A.C.S.,  a  parody 
of  his  own  verse,  252 

New  Shakspere  Society  and  the 
Swinburne  -  Fumivall 
controversy,  227,  250, 
251 

New  Sirens,  The  (Arnold),  A.C.S.'s 
early  knowledge  of,  53 

Newdigate  Prize  Poem  of  A.C.S., 
45  et  sqg.,  333 

Newman  Street,  No.  77,  A.C.S.'s 
second  London  abode, 
86 

Nichol,  John,  Oxford  friend  of 
A.C.S.,  37-9,  58,  63, 
68;  political  views  of, 
41 ;  devotion  to  Car- 
lyle's  works  and  in- 
fluence on  A.C.S.'s  re- 
publicanism, 53,  55, 
57;  letter  to,  from 
A.C.S.,  on  Watts'  care 
of  his  money-matters, 
246;  A.C.S.'s       ex- 

cursions with  and 
visits  to.  52,  233,  243; 
on  A.C.S.'s  genius,  40; 
on  Arnold's  Hellenism, 
53 ;   death  of,  271 

Niton,  219,  280 

Northcourt,  associated  with 
A.C.S.'s  childhood,  7,  11 

North  Crescent,  No.  12,  Bedford 
Square,  A.C.S.'s  rooms 
at,  183 

Northanger  Abbey  (Austen),  301 

Northumberland,  Henry,  5th  Earl 
of,  2 

Northumberland,  lines  on,  by 
A.C.S.,  autobiography 
in,  31 ;  visits  to,  and 
love  for,  of  the  poet,  80, 
82,  98,  280,  et  alibi 

Note  on  Charlotte  Bronte  (prose), 
by  A.C.S.,  235-237 

Note  on  the  Muscovite  Crusade 
(prose),  by  A.C.S.,  233 

Notes  on  Poems  and  Reviews,  by 
A.C.S.,  characteristics, 
156-7;  publication  and 
reception  of,  161 

Notre  Dame  de  Paris  (Hugo), 
A.C.S.'s  passion  for 
Hugo  started  by,  21 


INDEX 


353 


Novvelles  franqoises  en  prose  du 
XI W  Steele;  effect 
on  A.C.S.,  79-80 

Novels,  A.C.S.'s  way  of  regarding, 
248 

Noyades,  Les,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  96 

OBLATION,  The  (poem),  by 
A.C.S.,  197 

Ode,  by  A.C.S.,  for  the  Eton  Ninth 
Jubilee,  1891,  18,  275 

Ode  to  Victor  Hugo  by  A.C.S., 
probable  date  of,  146 

Ode  on  the  Insurrection  in  Candia, 
by  A.C.S.,  date  of, 
165 ;  praised  by  Maz- 
zini,  166 

Ode  to  Mazzini,  by  A.C.S.,  42  &  n., 
333 

Ode  on  the  Proclamation  of  the 
French  Republic,  by 
A.C.S.,  186,  225;  re- 
ception of,  188 

Odes  et  Ballades,  24 

Of  Liberty  and  Loyalty  (prose),  by 
A.C.S.,  333  , 

Offenbach,  visit  of,  to  Etretat,  179 

Old  Mortality  Society,  Oxford, 
members  and  meetings 
of,  38,  39  &  n.,  et  sqq.; 
A.C.S.'s  regicide  views 
at,  213 

On  the  Cliffs,  poem  by  A.C.S., 
254 

Once  a  Week,  A.C.S.,  asked  to 
contribute  to,  75 ;  his 
Dead  Love  published  in, 
80,  334-5 

Orchard,  The,  A.C.S.'s  love  of, 
lines  on,  and  visits  to, 
7,  219 

Ordeal,  The,  of  Richard  Feverel 
(Meredith),  93 

Orsini,  A.C.S.'s  hero-worship  of, 
54,  55,  237 

O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  219 

Ostend  passage,  A.C.S.'s  poetical 
description    of,    32,    280 

Ovid,  and  A.C.S.,  different  treat- 
ment by,  of  the  story 
of  Atalanta,  112-13 

"Owen  Meredith,"  see  Lytton, 
2nd  Lord 

Oxenham,  H.  N.,  attack  by,  on 
A.C.S.'s  poetry,  in  the 
Saturday   Review,    173 

Oxford  and  Cambridge  Review,  44 


Oxford  attitude  to  A.C.S.'s  poetry 
in  1856,  34,  and  in 
1866,  160 

Oxford  Movement,  9 

Oxford  University,  A.C.S.'s  life  at, 
28,  33  et  sqq.\  political 
views,  41,  290;  suc- 
cesses, 54 ;  departure, 
58,  64,  213;  name 
kept  on  lists  till  1878, 
65  n. ;  attitude  to,  in 
after  life,  19,  36,  37; 
visits  to  {see  also 
Jowett),  201-3 

Palgrave,  F.  T.,  139 

Pan  and  Thalassius,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,     253,     254,    273 

Paris,  Gaston,  on  the  Tristram 
saga,  260 

Paris,  Hugo's  invitation  to,  239; 
visits  to,  of  A.C.S., 
54-5,  98,  184,  265-6 

Pater,  Walter,  39,  and  A.C.S.,  202 

Patmore,  Coventry,  poem  by,  131; 
parody  of,  by  A.C.S., 
252 

Pausanius,  and  the  story  of 
Atalanta,  111-12 

Payne,  J.  Bertram,  of  Moxons, 
and  the  publication  of 
Atalanta,  107,  and  of 
Poems  and  Ballads, 
141-2,  152-3 

Pellegrini's  caricature  of  A.C.S., 
286-7 

Penllywn,  A.C.S.  at,  158 

Percy  family,  relations  of,  with 
the  Swinburnes,  2,  4, 
and  with  the  Ashburn- 
hams,  4 

Perinde  ac  Cadaver,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  political  ideas 
in,  291 

Persae,  the,  odes  in,  in  praise 
of  Athenian  liberty, 
A.C.S.'s  joy  in,  229 

Philip  van  Artevelde   (Taylor),  257 

Pickering,  Basil  Montagu,  pub- 
lisher, 75 

Pilgrimage,  The,  of  Pleasure,  mo- 
rality play,  by  A.C.S., 
100 

Pilgrims,  The,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  197 

Pines,  The,  Putney  Hill,  A.C.S.'s 
home  for  the  last  thirty 
years  of  his  life,  246 


354    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


Pleasure,  the  Prelude  to  Tristram 
published  in,  261 

Pleasures   of  Memory   (Rogers),   24 

Poems  (Meredith),  A.C.S.'s  defence 
of,  92,  93-4 

Poems  (Rossetti),  review  of,  by 
A.C.S.,  185 

Poems  and  Ballads,  by  A.C.S., 
92,  119;  ornament 
in,  189 ;  publication, 
effect,  and  reception 
of,  134,  141-2,  149,  150 
et  sqq.,  216;  reviews 
of,  150-1,  effect  on 
A.C.S.,  158-9,  160; 
American  edition  of, 
162;  question         of 

dates  of  poems  in, 
143  et  sqq. ;  prosecu- 
tion feared  by  pub- 
lisher, 152,  and  urged 
by  Ludlow,  154-5 ;  re- 
publication, by  Hotten, 
155-6;  A.C.S.'s  de- 
fence of,  156  et  sqq. 
Second  Series,  by  A.C.S.,  publi- 
cation and  serene  style 
of,  239;  dedication  to 
Burton,  230 ;  features 
of,  239-42 
Third  Series,  contents  and  dedi- 
cation, 273-4 

Poet,  The,  and  the  Woodlouse, 
parody  of  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing, by  A.C.S.,  253 

Poetae  Graeci,  A.C.S.'s  devotion 
to,  24 

Polignac  family,  and  the  Swin- 
bumes,  3  &  n. 

Political  sonnets,  by  A.C.S.,  where 
published,  243 

Pollen,  John  Hungerford,  106 

Poorten-Schwartz,  J.  M.  W.  van 
der,  on  A.C.S.,  279,  290, 
308 

Portrait,  The  (prose),  by  A.C.S.,  333 

Posthumous  works  of  A.C.S.,  how 
dealt  with,  331  et  sqq. 
Privately  printed  — 
Prose,  333-4 
Verse,  333 

Powell,  George,  A.C.S.'s  visits  to, 
in  Wales,  158,  and  at 
fitretat,   171,   178-9 

Powell,  Sir  Douglas,  281 

Praxithea,  Queen,  in  Erechtheus, 
230.  231 


Prelude  to  Songs  before  Sunrise, 
176,  194,  explanatory 
of  the  change  in  A.C.S.'s 
style,  189-90 

Prelude,  The,  to  Tristram,  splen- 
dour of,  263;  how 
first  published,  261 

Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood  {see 
also  under  Names),  51 ; 
aims  of,  slow  recogni- 
tion of,  108;  attitude 
to  Blake,  180;  head' 
of  A.C.S.  often  painted 
by,  70-1 ;  Meredith's 
association  with,  86, 
93;  poetry  of,  the 
first  success,  108,  137; 
position  of,  in  1865-66, 
136;  deaths  of  mem- 
bers, 271 

Procter,  Adelaide  Ann,  120 

Procter,  Bryan  Waller,  A.C.S.'s 
intimacy  with,  120, 
311,  and  elegy  on,  121, 
240 

Procter,  Mrs.,  120 

Professor,  The  (Bronte),  235 

Prophetic  Books,  of  Blake,  A.C.S.'s 
examination  of,  181-2 

Publishers,  A.C.S.'s  relations  with, 
141-2,  154  et  sqq.,  164  n., 
214,  215,  235,  247 

Purnell,  Thomas,  friend  of  A.C.S., 
166,  212,  224,  225 

Putney,  life  at,  of  A.C.S.,  244, 
245  et  sqq. 

Pyrenees,  visit  to,  of  A.C.S.,  97 


QUATRE  -  VINGT  -  TREIZE 
(Hugo),  A.C.S.  on,  219, 
220 

Quatre  Vents  de  V Esprit  (Hugo),  196 

Queen  Iseult,  early  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  44 

Queen  Mab  (Shelley),  183;  fine 
occasioned  by  the  re- 
print of,  142 

Queen  Mary,  see  Mary  Stuart 

Queen  Mother,  The,  and  Rosamond, 
dramas  by  A.C.S.,  56, 
insuccess  of,  75-6,  107; 
interest  of  the  former 
and  models  of,  76-7 

Qiiia  Mulium  Amavit,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  191,  197 

Quinault,  tragedies  of,  126 


INDEX 


355 


RALPH  Roister  Doisier  by  Udall, 
Head  Master  of  Eton, 
first  English  comedy, 
275 

Raper,  R.  W.,  A.C.S.'s  remark  to, 
on  parodying  Brown- 
ing, 253;  Scott's  por- 
trait of  A.C.S.  owned 
by,  72  n. ;  on  A.C.S.'s 
thanks  for  Jowett's 
excisions  from  Both- 
well,  217 

Rappel,  Le,  translation  for,  of 
A.C.S.'s  articles,  recom- 
mended   by    Hugo,    185 

Record,  A,  of  Friendship  (prose), 
by  A.C.S.,  333;  on  his 
friendship  with  Ros- 
setti,  68 

Red  House,  home  of  the  Morris 
family,  A.C.S.  at,  66,  70 

Redesdale,  Lord,  on  A.C.S.'s  entry 
to  Eton,  and  his  ap- 
pearance and  life  there, 
vi,  vii,  11  et  sqq.,  284, 
317  et  sqq.,  on  a  meeting 
in  1874,  222-3 

Reeve,  Henry,  148 

Reform  League  invitation  to 
A.C.S.  to  enter  Parlia- 
ment, 175 

"Reginald  Clavering"  in  The 
Sisters ;  A.C.S.'s  descrip- 
tion of  himself  in,  30-2 

Religion  (see  also  Theology),  atti- 
tude to,  of  A.C.S., 
308-10 

Republic,  the,  A.C.S.'s  conception 
of,  194 

Republican  poems,  by  A.C.S., 
scheme  for  publishing 
given   up    (1869),    183 

Republique,  La,  des  Lettres,  A.C.S.'s 
contribution,  327;  Mal- 
larme's    alteration,    328 

Revenge,  The,  of  Biissy  d'Ambois 
(Chapman),  A.C.S.'s 
enthusiasm  for,  76,  77, 
221-2 

Ring  and  the  Book  (Browning), 
135;     success   of,    259 

Ritchie,  Lady,  on  A.C.S.  at 
Fryston,  95-6;  on  his 
words  on  "dying  for 
England,"  291-2 ;  on 
his  kindness  to  Ber- 
tram Brook,  306 


Riviera,  the,  A.C.S.  on,  67-8 

Rizzio,  David,  murder  of,  215, 
218 

Rogers,  Samuel,  A.C.S.'s  visit  to, 
23-4 

Roi,  Le,  s'amuse  (Hugo),  A.C.S.'s 
visit  to  Paris  for  per- 
formance of,  265 

Roman  de  la  Rose,  Chaucer's  trans- 
lation of,  148 

Ronsard's  poems  carried  to  the 
scaffold  by  Chastelard, 
127 

Rosamond,  drama  by  A.C.S.  (see 
also  Queen  Mother  and 
Rosamond),  56,  62 

Rossetti,  Christina,  author  of 
Goblin  Market,  108, 
137;  A.C.S.'s  Roundels 
dedicated  to,  266 ; 
death  of,  271 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  47,  49, 
200;  and  A.C.S., 
friendship  of,  43  &  n., 
58,  66,  84,  85,  133-4, 
212,  depth  of,  and 
value  to  A.C.S.,  the  poet 
on,  68;  their  relations 
as  master  and  pupil, 
69-70,  and  life  together 
at  Chelsea,  86;  sup- 
port of,  in  the  matter 
of  Poems  and  Ballads, 
153;  death  of  his 
wife,  A.C.S.  on,  84-5, 
the  buried  poems, 
A.C.S.'s  help  in  re- 
calling, 85 ;  designer 
of  binding  for  Ata- 
lanta,  107 ;  drawing 
by,  of  A.C.S.,  75,  de- 
fects of,  285-6;  and 
Howell,  159;  interest 
of,  in  Blake's  works, 
180;  parody  of,  by 
A.C.S.,  252;  poetry  of, 
reception  of,  136;  posi- 
tion of,  in  the  'sixties, 
136;  on  A.C.S.'s  poetic 
genius,  87;  death  of, 
271 

Rossetti,  Mrs.  D.  G.,  and  A.C.S.'s 
friendship;  her  death, 
and  his  account  of  it, 
84-5 

Rossetti,  Mr.  William  Michael,  43 
n.,   90,   329;    at  Tudor 


356    ALGERNON  CHARLES   SWINBURNE 


Rossetti,  Mr.  William  Michael  — 
continued. 

House,  86 ;  helpful- 
ness to  A.C.S.  aud 
criticism  on  his  poetry, 
153,  161;  interest  of, 
in  Blake,  180 

Royal  Literary  Fund  Dinner, 
A.C.S.'s  speech  at, 
146-8 

Royal  Personages,  A.C.S.'s  atti- 
tude to,  220 

Ruhdiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam,  influ- 
ence  of,   on   A.C.S.,   94 

Ruskin,  John,  82,  288;  A.C.S.'s 
Oxford  admiration  for, 
40,  and  first  meeting 
with,  47;  attempts  of 
A.C.S.  to  introduce 
him  to  Whistler,  272; 
attitude  of,  to  A.C.S., 
50,  108,  and  to  Poems 
and  Ballads,  155 ;  and 
Howell,  159;  and  Lady 
Trevelyan,  325 ;  and 
the  Pre-Raphaelites, 

108,  136;  on  A.C.S.'s 
scholarship  and  genius, 
155 ;  on  Atalanta,  and 
on  A.C.S.,  117;  on 
Poems  and  Ballads,  138 

Saffi,  Aurelio,  A.C.S.'s  Marino 
Faliero  dedicated  to,  269 

St.  Aldwyn,  Viscount,  on  A.C.S. 
at  Eton,  14 

Saint-Amand,  209 

Saint-Beuve,  168 

Saint-Victor,  Paul  de,  A.C.S.'s 
meeting  with,  184;  in- 
fluence of,  on  A.C.S., 
168,  206 

Saintsbury,  Professor  G.,  on  the 
choruses  in  Atalanta, 
118;  on  Poems  and 
Ballads,  161 

Sala,  George  Augustus,  on  A.C.S. 
and  Tupper,  161-2 

Sandys,  Frederick,  artist,  and 
A.C.S.,  98;  works  bv, 
98 

Sappho,  A.C.S.'s  passion  for,  24, 
25 ;  his  verses  in 
praise  of,  167,  254 

Sarawak,  H.H.  the  Ranee  of,  on 
A.C.S.'s  kindness  to  her 
sick  son,  305,  30G 


Sark,  A.C.S.'s  enthusiasm  for,  and 
lyrics  on,  233-4,  254, 
264,  280 

Sartoris,  Mrs.,  at  Vichy,  singing 
of,  A.C.S.'s  delight  in, 
184,  240 

Saturday  Revieio,  criticism  in,  of 
Poems  and  Ballads, 
150-1,  and  later  re- 
cantation, 161 ;  Oxen- 
ham's  attack  in,  on 
A.C.S.'s  poetry,  173 

Saviour,  The,  of  Society.  Two 
Sonnets  and  a  Con- 
troversy, by  A.C.S., 
335 ;  criticisms  on,  of 
The  Spectator,  209 

Savonarola  e  II  Priore  de  San 
Marco    (Landor),    103 

Scholar  Gipsy  (Arnold),  36 

Scotch  tour  of  A.C.S.  with  Harri- 
son, 203-4 

Scott,  Robert,  Master  of  Balliol,  33 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  example  of 
healthy  genius,  283 

Scott,  William  Bell,  artist,  A.C.S.'s 
friendship  with,  and 
visits  to,  47,  80,  242; 
elegy  on,  72;  dedica- 
tion to,  of  Poems  and 
Ballads :  Third  Series, 
274 ;  Autobiographical 
Notes  by,  and  A.C.S.'s 
denunciation  of  him, 
72-3,  274;  portrait  by, 
of  A.C.S.,  72  &  n.;  on 
A.C.S.'s  likeness  to  the 
Malatesta  in  Uccello's 
picture,  48 

Scottish  theology,  A.C.S.'s  know- 
ledge of,  130 

Sea,  the,  A.C.S.'s  love  of,  8,  50, 
83,  118-19 

Seaton,  associations  of,  with  Lady 
Trevelyan,  326 

Selections  from  Byron,  with  critical 
preface,  by  A.C.S., 
142-3,  182 

Selimus  (Greene),  270 

Sewell,  Miss  Elizabeth,  338; 
on  A.C.S.'s  visit  to 
Wordsworth,  15 ;  and 
A.C.S.'s  meeting  with 
Signora  Fronduti,  337 

Sewell,  William,  Warden  of  Radley 
College,  and  A.C.S., 
337-8 


INDEX 


357 


Shakespeare,  William,  A.C.S.'s 
early  interest  in,  13-14; 
bad  handwriting  of, 
315 

Shakespearian  representations, 

A.C.S.'s      attitude      to, 
78-9 
Studies  of  A.C.S.,  205,  22G-7,  249 

Sheffield,  Lord,  on  A.C.S.'s  views 
at  Oxford,  41,  58 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  39,  220; 
Arnold's  views  on, 
143 ;  constitution  and 
looks  of,  283;  in- 
fluence of,  on  A.C.S., 
188;  poems  of,  com- 
pared with  those  of 
A.C.S.,    109,     118,    263 

Shirley  (Bronte),  Note  on  (prose), 
by  A.C.S..  235 

Sichel,  Edith,  on  seeing  A.C.S.  in 
a  mist,  274-5 

Siddell,  Miss  Lizzie,  see  Rossetti, 
Mrs.  D.  G. 

Sidestrand,  A.C.S.  at,  269 

Siena,  poem  by  A.C.S.,  104-5, 
173-4 ;  publication  of, 
176 

Simon,  Sir  John  and  his  wife,  82 

Sisters,  The,  play  by  A.C.S.,  275; 
autobiography    in,    30-2 

Skye,  A.C.S.'s  visit  to,  52 

Smith,  Alexander,  drama  by,  11 

Solferino,  battle  of,  59 

Song,  The,  of  the  Bower  (Rossetti), 
as  remembered  by 
A.C.S.,  85  n. 

Song  for  the  Centenary  of  Landor, 
by  A.C.S.,  his  own 
opinion   on,    255 

Song  of  Italy,  by  A.C.S. :  his  own 
view  of,  163,  193;  copy 
of,  by  A.C.S.,  315  n.; 
dedication  of,  to  Maz- 
zini,  166;  length  of, 
166;  metre  and  other 
features  of,  173;  pub- 
lication and  reception 
of,  172-3;  included  in 
Songs  of  Two  Nations, 
225 

Song  in  Time  of  Revolution,  by 
A.C.S.,  88;  reception  of, 
at  Cambridge,  161 

Songs  before  Sunrise,  by  A.C.S., 
119,  200,  261,  292; 
A.C.S.'s     own     attitude 


Songs  before  Sunrise  —  continued 

to,  193;  writing  of, 
176,  179;  splendour 
of,  176-7;  dates  of  the 
poems,  179-80;  modern 
difficulty  in  enjoying, 
190-1 ;  rank  of,  among 
works  of  A.C.S.,  188-9; 
restraint  of  style  in,  189, 
190;    solemnity  of,    196 

Songs  of  the  Springtides,  by  A.C.S., 
253;     reception   of,    256 

Songs  of  Two  Nations,  by  A.C.S., 
209,  292,  poems  com- 
prised in,  225 

Sonnets  by  A.C.S.,  175-6 
on  Barbes,  185 
during  the  Boer  War,  293 
to  Hugo,   by  A.C.S.,  as  dedica- 
tion  to   Bothwell,   218 
to  Landor,  by  A.C.S.,  103 
on  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  by 
A.C.S.,  208 

Sordello  (Browning),  A.C.S.  on,  56 

Southwold,  A.C.S.'s  visits  to,  228, 
235 

Souvenir  de  la  Nuit  du  i'  (Hugo), 
194 

Spartali  family,  friends  of  A.C.S., 
140,  185 

Specimens  of  the  English  Dramatic 
Poets  (Lamb),  A.C.S. 
on  his  debt  to,  17 

Spectator,  The,  A.C.S.'s  contribu- 
tions to,  in  prose  and 
verse,  88-92,  93,  94,  96, 
97,  145;  A.C.S.'s  mis- 
understanding with, 
97 ;  controversy  of 
A.C.S.  with,  on  The 
Saviour  of  Society,  209, 
210 

Spedding,  James,  95;  and  the  date 
of   Henry    VIII.,    227 

Stanhope,  Lady  Hester,  5 

Stanhope,  Spencer,  37,  58 

Stanley,  Dean,  148 

Stanley,  Lyulph,  see  Sheffield, 
Lord 

Stanley  of  Alderley,  Maria  Josepha, 
Lady,  friend  of  Gibbon, 
119,  199 

Statue,  The,  and  the  Bust  (Brown- 
ing), 40 

Stedman,  E.  C.,  attempts  by,  to 
date  the  verses  in 
Poems       and       Ballads, 


358    ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


Stedman,  E.  C.  —  continued 

145 ;  letters  to,  from 
A.C.S.,  on  his  an- 
cestry, 1-2,  on  his 
birth,  6,  on  the  com- 
pletion of  Chastelard, 
23,  on  Hertha  as  his 
best  single  poem,  193, 
on  his  love  of  the  sea, 
8,  on  his  religious 
views,  309 

Stendhal,  A.C.S.'s  interest  in,  202 

Stephen,  Mrs.  Leslie,  95 

"Stephen,  Rev.  Leslie,"  148 

Stokes,  Whitly,  and  A.C.S.'s 
genius,  87 

Stories  after  Nature  (Wells),  73 

Story  of  Elizabeth  (Miss  Thack- 
eray), 96 

Strachan-Davidson,  J.  L.,  vii, 
65 

Strayed  Reveller  (Arnold),  53 

Stuart,  Mary,  see  Mary,  Queen  of 
Scots,   and   Mary  Stuart 

Stuarts,  the,  Swinburne  devotion 
to,  3 

Stubbs,  Rev.  W.  (later  Bishop 
of  Oxford),  A.C.S.  as 
pupil  to,  60-3 

Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry,  by 
A.C.S.,  276 

Studies  in  Song,  by  A.C.S.,  recep- 
tion of,  256 

Study  of  Ben  Jonson,  by  A.C.S., 
276 

Study  of  Shakespeare,  by  A.C.S., 
scope  of,  226,  A.C.S. 
on,  226-7 ;  publication 
of,  249 

Study  of  Victor  Hugo,  by  A.C.S., 
269 

Sundew,  The,  poem  by  A.C.S., 
88 

Swinburne,  Admiral  Charles, 
father  of  A.C.S.,  4-5, 
29,  67,  201,  318,  319; 
allowance  made  by, 
to  A.C.S.,  65-6;  on 
A.C.S.'s  genius  and 
lack  of  self-control, 
140;  on  A.C.S.'s  life 
at  Holmwood,  170 ; 
death  of,  and  will, 
A.C.S.'s  resentment  at 
the  latter,  234-5;  elegy 
on,  by  A.C.S.,  240; 
library  of,  199 


Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles 

Ancestry,  parents,  and  rela- 
tions of,  1  et  sqq. 
Biographical  references,  in  order 
of  time 
Birth  and  birthplace,  4,  6; 
childhood,  home,  and 
early  education,  9-1 1 ; 
Eton  days,  11  et  sqq., 
317  et  sqq. ;  visit  to 
Wordsworth,  15 ;  Ox- 
ford life  and  friends,  28 
et  sqq. 
London  life  and  friends,  65 
et  sqq. ;  Italian  tour, 
67-8;  literary  activities, 
69-70,  73  et  sqq.;  dis- 
appointment in  love 
and  verses  thereon, 
82-3;  death  of  Mrs. 
Rossetti,  84-6 ;  life 
at  Tudor  House  {q.v.), 
86,  105-6;  writing  for 
The  Spectator,  87  et  sqq. ; 
Pyrenean  visit,  97 ; 
visit  to  Paris,  98;  epi- 
leptiform attacks  be- 
gun, 98-9;  stay  in 
Cornwall,  in  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  and  in 
Italy,  100  et  sqq.;  the 
meeting  with  Landor, 
100  et  sqq. ;  life  in 
rooms,  106  et  sqq. ; 
visit  to  Cornwall,  106; 
publication  of  Atalanta 
in  Calydon,  107-8  et 
sqq. ;  fame  enjoyed, 
119;  racketing  ways, 
119,  122;  publication 
of  Chastelard,  122  et 
sqq. ;  publication  of 
Poems  and  Ballads,  pre- 
liminaries, etc.,  133  et 
sqq.,  142,  149  et  sqq. ; 
Laus  Veneris  published, 
141 ;  in  defence  of 
Poems  and  Ballads, 
156-7,  161 ;  notoriety 
of,  as  affecting  his 
temperament,  158  et 
sqq. ;  stay  in  Wales, 
158;  the  Song  of 
Italy  begun,  163;  irre- 
gular life  in  town,  163; 
the  poems  on  Italy  in 
progress,     165     et    sqq.; 


INDEX 


359 


Swinburne,  A.  C.  —  continued 
London  life  —  continued 

association  with  the 
Fortnightly  {q.v.),\QS~Q; 
more  racketing,  170; 
stay  at  Etretat,  and 
Menken's  poems,  171-2; 
Song  of  Italy  published, 
172  et  sqq. ;  Appeal 
to  England  published, 
174 ;  invitation  from 
Reform  League  to 
enter  parliament,  175 ; 
Songs  before  Sunrise  in 
progress,  176,  work  on, 
as  affecting  his  health, 
177 ;  swimming  acci- 
dent at  Etretat,  178-9; 
William  Blake  pub- 
lished, 180 ;  Selections 
from  Coleridge  pub- 
lished, 182;  change  of 
abode,  183;  an  infertile 
period,  183-5 ;  visit  to 
Vichy,  184,  and  to 
Paris,  184 ;  publication 
of  Songs  before  Sunrise, 
187,  closing  the  earlier 
portion  of  his  career, 
188;  middle  years,  the 
dispute  with  the  Arts 
Club,  198;  change  in 
character,  198-9;  at 
work  on  Bothwell,  201 
et  sqq. ;  in  Scotland  with 
Jowett,  202 ;  Scotch 
tour,  204;  Tristram  of 
Lyonesse  begun,  205 ; 
the  controversy  on  the 
"  Fleshly  School  of 
Poetry,"  the  poet's 
invective  displayed  in, 
205 ;  essay  on  John 
Ford,  germ  of  blem- 
ishes in,  206;  Elegy 
on  Gautier  written, 
207-8;  uproarious  Son- 
nets on  the  death  of 
Napoleon  III.,  209-10; 
a  brush  with  Emerson, 
210-12;  cooling  friend- 
ship, the  solace  of 
Jowett's  friendship, 

212  et  sqq. ;  eccentrici- 
ties, 213-14  ;  Watts 
becomes  his  helper, 
215 ;        Bothivell      pub- 


Swinburne,  A.  C.  —  continued 
London  life  —  continued 

lished,  216;  in  Corn- 
wall and  elsewhere, 
219;  work  on  Chap- 
man published,  222 ; 
essays  on  Elizabethan 
dramatists  written, 

223;  the  Lamb  cen- 
tenary, 224-5 ;  literary 
activity  in  1875,  Songs 
of  Two  Nations,  and 
Essays  and  Studies,  etc. 
published,  225-6 ;  at 
work  on  his  Study  of 
Shakespeare,  226-7;  the 
Fumivall  controversy 
begun,  227;  Erechtheus 
published,  227 ;  life 
circa  1875-8,  and  ly- 
rics written,  232  et 
sqq.;  visit  to  the 
Channel  Islands,  233 ; 
illness  and  stay  at 
Holmwood,  234;  death 
of  his  father,  annoy- 
ance at  the  will,  234-5; 
work  on  Charlotte 
Bronte,  235-6 ;  rooms 
in  Great  James  Street, 
214,  236-7,  and  mode  of 
life,  237-8;  a  notable 
figure  at  the  London 
Restaurant,  238-9 ;  in- 
vitations to  Paris,  239; 
second  series  of  Poems 
and  Ballads  published, 
239  et  sqq.;  his  health, 
239 ;  the  translations 
from  Villon  made, 
242-3 ;  meeting  with 
Oscar  Wilde,  244;  life 
in  1878,  visit  to  Scot- 
land, 243^,  serious 
ill-health,  and  the  re- 
moval to  Putney,  244, 
245 
Putney  life,  245  et  sqq. ; 
poems  written  during, 
245  et  sqq. ;  change  in 
character,  246,  268, 
272;  routine  of  life, 
247-8 ;  Mary  Stuart 
begun,  249;  A  Study  in 
Shakespeare  published, 
249,  in  the  controversy 
with       Furnivall       con- 


360    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


Swinburne,  A.  C.  —  continued 
Putney  life  —  continued 

cerning  it,  249-51, 
attitude  of,  during  the 
Buchanan  Examiner 

libel  suit,  312-13;  the 
volume  of  parodies, 
251-3;  Songs  of  the 
Springtides  published, 
253,  faults  in,  254; 
Mary  Stuart  published, 
256  et  sqq.,  Tristram 
of  Lyonesse  begun,  259 
et  sqq.,  and  published, 
261  et  sqq. ;  visit  to 
Sark,  264 ;  visit  to 
Victor  Hugo  in  Paris, 
265-6,  Roundels  by, 
266-7 ;  other  writings 
\see  also  titles),  269 
et  sqq.;  growing  deaf- 
ness, limitation  of 
friendships,  death  of 
friends,  and  a  recon- 
ciliation, 270-1 ;  the 
young  generation,  and 
the  devotion  of  Watts- 
Dunton,  271 ;  joy  in 
young  children,  271-2 ; 
the  3rd  series  of  Poems 
and  Ballads  published, 
273-4:  Ode  for  Eton 
Jubilee,  275 ;  other 
writings,  276 ;  the 
laureateship,  why  not 
oflfered  him,  277;  The 
Tale  of  Balen,  277-9; 
death  of  his  mother 
the  last  crisis  of  his 
life,  279;  the  last 
thirteen  years,  279, 
illness,  280,  death,  and 
burial,  281-2 

Swinburne,  Alice,  sister  of  A.C.S.,  8 

Swinburne,  Baron  E.  R.  F.  F., 
Chamberlain  to  Franz 
Josef  of  Austria,  5 

Swinburne,  Edith,  sister  of  A.C.S., 
illness  of,  98,  death  of, 
100 

Swinburne,  Edward,  brother  of 
A.C.S.,  234 

Swinburne  family,  characteristics 
of,  1  et  sqq.;  religious 
views  of,  8-9,  338 

Swinburne,  George,  2 

Swinburne,  Henry,  1 


Swinburne,  Isabel,  sister  of  A.C.S., 
3  n.,  45,  267 

Swinburne,  John,  first  Baronet,  2 

Swinburne,  Lady  Jane  Henrietta 
{nee  Ashburnham), 

mother  of  A.C.S.,  4, 
16,  29,  30,  165,  170-1, 
199,  337 ;  education  and 
accomplishments  of,  5 ; 
A.C.S.'s  first  teacher, 
5,  9,  10,  318,  319; 
and  A.C.S.,  at  Eton,  13; 
A.C.S.  taken  by,  to 
Rogers,  23-4 ;  relations 
with  A.C.S.  after  the 
death  of  his  father, 
235,  244;  The  Tale  of 
Balen  dedicated  to, 
by  A.C.S.,  279;  voice  of , 
307,  319-20;  death  of, 
effect  of,  on  A.C.S., 
279 

Swinburne,  Robert,  Austrian 
career  of,  5 

Swinburne,  Sir  Adam  de,  2 

Swinburne,  Sir  John,  grandfather 
of  A.C.S.,  2-4;  friends 
of,  3;  influence  of,  on 
A.C.S.'s  political  views, 
41 ;   death  of,  71 

Swinburne,  Thomas,  and  Mary 
Stuart,  124 

Symonds,  John  Addington,  39 

Symposium,  the,  of  Plato,  Jowett's 
deference  to  A.C.S. 
over,  212-13  &  n. 

Taine,  H.,  on  A.C.S.,  201-2 

Tale,  The,  of  Balen,  poem  by  A.C.S., 
277-8 ;  dedication  of, 
278-9;  A.C.S.'s  reading 
of,  Maartens  on,  308 

"Tame  Ox,  Era  of,"  153 

Tarver,  Henry,  French  master  at 
Eton,  20,  21 

Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  and  Atalanta, 
257 

Tegea,  temple  at,  111 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  87;  acceptance 
by,  of  a  peerage, 
A.C.S.,  view  of,  and 
poems  provoked  by, 
269;  parody  of,  by 
A.C.S.,  252 ;  poems 
of,  21-2;  influence  and 
art  of,  134,  135;  sensa- 
tion made  by,  in  youth. 


INDEX 


361 


Tennyson,  Alfred — continued 

160;  style  of,  77; 
revolt  of  taste  against, 
108;  treatment  by,  of 
the  emotions,  129 ; 
visits  to,  of  A.C.S.,  53, 
and  later  meeting  be- 
tween, 139;  on  A.C.S., 
and  his  technique,  52, 
138-9 ;  on  Atalanta, 
139;  view  of,  on  the 
date  of  Henry  VIII., 
227;  death  of,  276-7 

Thackeray,  William  Makepeace, 
his  daughters,  and 
A.C.S.'s  reading  of  his 
poems,  95-6 

Theatre,  the,  A.C.S.'s  attitude  to, 
78-9 

Theology,  attitude  to,  of  A.C.S., 
109,  114,  115-17,  308 

ThSophile  (prose),  by  A.C.S.,  334 

Thirlwall,  Connop,  Bishop  of  St. 
David's,  on  A.C.S.'s 
Greek  elegiac  verses 
prefixed  to  Atalanta, 
110-111,  114-15 

"Thomas  Maitland,"  and  the 
"  Fleshly  School  of 
Poetry,"  A.C.S.'s  con- 
troversy with,  205 

Thomas,  Moy,  and  A.C.S.'s  dis- 
putes with  publishers, 
187 

Thomas  Nabbes,  essay  bv  A.C.S., 
206,  223,  334 

Thomson,  Rt.  Rev.  William,  Arch- 
bishop of  York,  95,  96 

Thyrsis  (Arnold),  36,  135,  167 

Tintagel,   A.C.S.'s  stay  at,   99-100 

Tiresias,  by  A.C.S.,  176;  A.C.S. 
on,  177 

To  Walt  Whitman  in  America,  by 
A.C.S.,  196 

Tombeau,  Le,  de  Theophile  Gautier, 
A.C.S.'s  contributions 
to, 206-8 

Toumeur,  Cyril,  works  of,  298 ; 
publication  of,  sug- 
gested by  A.C.S.,  206 

Transformed  Metamorphosis  (Tour- 
neur),  206 

Trelawney,  and  A.C.S.,  friendship  ' 
of,  220-1,  311 

Trevelyan,  Lady  (Pauline),  and 
A.C.S. ,  value  of  her 
friendship,     47    et    sqq.. 


Trevelyan,  Lady — continued 

71,  72,  74,  324  et 
alibi ;  caricature  by, 
of  A.C.S.  at  the  barri- 
cades, 54,  190;  defence 
by,  of  A.C.S.,  150; 
influence  on  A.C.S., 
149,  150;  letter  on, 
from  Sir  G.  O.  Tre- 
velyan, 324  et  sqq. ; 
support  of,  to  Poems 
and  Ballads,  130; 
death  of,  48,  149-50,  326 

Trevelyan,  Sir  George  Otto,  on 
A.C.S.,  in  1858,  49,  50, 
71,  324-5 

Trevelyan,  Sir  Walter,  and  A.C.S., 
47,  80;  and  the  French 
novel,  71-2 

Triameron,  projected  by  A.C.S., 
79;  tales  written  for, 
80;   list  of,  334-5 

Triplicity  of  mediaeval  imagina- 
tion, A.C.S.  on,  148 

Tristram  of  Lyonesse,  epic  by 
A.C.S.,  inception,  pro- 
gress, and  reception  of, 
57,  203,  259-64;  par- 
tial copy  of,  by  A.C.S., 
315  n. 

Triumph  of  Gloriana,  earlv  poem 
by  A.C.S.,   20-1,   332 

Triumph,  The,  of  Time,  poem  by 
A.C.S.,  expressive  of 
his  feelings,  82-3;  date 
of,  145 

Troilus  and  Cressida  (Chaucer), 
A.C.S.  on,  148 

Trollope,  Anthony,  130,  148 

Tudor  House,  Chelsea,  A.C.S.'s 
life  at,  with  Rossetti 
and  other  residents, 
86,  93,  99,  105,  106 

Tummel  Bridge,  A.C.S.  at,  202, 
203 ;  Prelude  to  Bothwell 
written  at,  205,  217 

Tupper,  Martin,  G.  A.  Sala  on,  162 

Uffizi  Gallery,  the,  A.C.S.'s  notes 

on,  104 
Uncle    Silas    (Le    Fanu),    A.C.S.'s 

criticism  on,  248 
Under  the  Microscope,  pamphlet  by 

A.C.S.,  205 
Undergraduate      Papers,      A.C.S.'s 

contributions      to,      44, 

53  n. 


362    ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


Union,  The,  meeting  at,  of  A.C.S. 
with  Burne-Jones  and 
D.  G.  Rossetti,  43 

United  States,  passage  on,  in  An 
Appeal  to  England,   174 

Unpublished  writings  of  A.C.S., 
80,  85 ;  printed  pri- 
vately, 332-4,  335 ; 
still  unprinted,   334 

Vacquehie,  Auguste,  233;  writ- 
ing on,  by  A.C.S.  in 
French,  226 

Vichy,  A.C.S.'s  stay  at,  with  Bur- 
ton and  other  friends, 
184 ;  memories  of, 
in  Poems  and  Ballads: 
Second  Series,  240 

Victoria,  Queen,  A.C.S.'s  attitude 
to,  291;  on  A.C.S., 
in  reference  to  the 
laureateship,  277 

Victorian  conception  of  poetry, 
129,  131,  134,  153-6 

Villette  (Bronte),  A.C.S.  on,  235 

Villon,  Frangois,  148;  A.C.S.'s 
translations  from, 

233 ;  publication  of, 
243-4 

Violier  des  Histoires  Romaines, 
effect  of,  on  A.C.S., 
55 

Virgil,  attitude  to,  of  A.C.S.,  25, 
and  of  Tennyson,   52 

Vision  of  Bags  (prose),  by  A.C.S., 
334 

Vision  of  Spring  in  Winter,  poem 
by  A.C.S.,  melody  of, 
241 ;  produced  during 
sleep,  242 

Voice  from  the  Sea  (Whitman), 
A.C.S.  on,  95 

Voltaire  Centenary,  and  Hugo's 
invitation  to  A.C.S., 
239 

WAGNER  et  Tannhduser  a  Paris 
(Baudelaire),  given  by 
the  author  to  A.C.S., 
90  n.,  91 

Wallington,  visits  to,  of  A.C.S., 
47  et  sqq.,  71 

Warre-Cornish,  Dr.  Francis,  275; 
on  A.C.S.'s  feeling  for 
Eton,  18,  19  n. ;  on 
A.C.S.  as  "Mad  Swin- 
burne," 26 


Warre-Cornish,  Mrs.,  on  A.C.S. 
at  Eton,  13-14 

Watts,  George  Frederick,  237; 
portrait  by,  of  A.C.S., 
169 

Watts,  Theodore,  see  W^atts- 
Dunton 

Watts-Dunton,  Walter  Theodore, 
224;  dislike  for  the 
"macabre"  in  A.C.S.'s 
writings,  301,  for 
Whistler,  273,  for  Whit- 
man, 276;  fears  con- 
cerning Tristram,  260 ; 
portrait  of  A.C.S. 
chosen  by,  205 ;  re- 
lations with  A.C.S., 
214-15;  A.C.S.'s  stay 
with,  at  Southwold, 
228;  the  rescue  of 
A.C.S.  and  long  after- 
care of  the  poet,  245 
et  sqq.,  passim ;  in- 
fluence of,  on  A.C.S.'s 
views  and  writings, 
255.  268,  276,  292,  301, 
308;  on  A.C.S.'s  visit 
to  Paris  in  1882,  265; 
on  A.C.S.'s  article  on 
Whistler,  273  &  n. 

Webb,  Philip,  70 

Wells,  Charles  J.,  poems  of, 
A.C.S.'s  enthusiasm 

for,  73-4,  76,  311 

West  Malvern,  A.C.S.  at,  217,  223 

Whistler,  James,  91,  136,  222 
friendship  with  A.C.S. 
98;  phases  of,  159-60^ 
272-3 ;  approval  by 
of  Poems  and  Ballads, 
138;  attack  on,  by 
A.C.S.  in  the  Fort- 
nightly (1888),  272-3; 
the  reply  in  The  World, 
273 

Whistler,  Mrs.,  mother  of  the 
painter,  A.C.S.'s  debt 
to,  98,  99,  160 

White,  Dr.  Edwin,  281 

Whitman,  Walt,  243;  A.C.S.'s 
\iews  on,  at  different 
periods,  94-5,  162;  the 
essay  of  recantation,  276 

Wilde,  Oscar,  A.C.S.  on,  243 

Wilkinson,  Rev.  John,  A.C.S.  pre- 
pared by,  for  Oxford, 
29 


INDEX 


363 


William  Blake,  critical  essay  by 
A.C.S.,  142,  154;  pub- 
lication of,  and  features 
of,  180-2 

Wise,  Mr.  Thomas  J.,  bibliographer 
of  A.C.S.,  271;  aid 
given  by,  in  regard  to 
A.C.S.'s  posthumous 

works,  vii,  viii,  323 
et        sqq. ;  collection 

owned  by,  of  A.C.S.'s 
works,  164,  175,  209  n., 
223,  251,  273,  331-2; 
on  A.C.S.'s  few  copies 
of  poems,  315  n. ;  on 
the  delay  in  issue  of 
Poems  and  Ballads,   149 

Wood,  Benjamin,  43 

Woodford,  Rev.  James  Russell, 
Bishop    of    Ely,    A.C.S. 


prepared  by,  for  Ox- 
ford, 33 

Woodgate,  Mr.  W.  B.,  on  A.C.S. 
at  Oxford ;  visits  to 
Radley  College,  and 
love  of  poetry,   337-8 

Wordsworth,  William,  and  A.C.S.'s 
visit  to,  15 ;  death  of, 
23, 295 

Worm,  The,  of  Spindlestonlteugk, 
poem  by  A.C.S.,  333 

Wright,  Aldis,  and  Furnivall, 
250 


Young,  Sir  George,  on  A.C.S.'s 
hair,  and  character- 
istics at  Eton,  12-13. 
14,  16;  on  the  size  of 
hb  head,  284 


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